Web logs, or blogs, started as
personal websites where a person would gather together links of other websites
that they were interested in, and comment on each link. Though simply a collection of links, early
blogs were still a way to learn about people without the need for them to write
a profile about themselves—simply by viewing the sites they found interesting
and reading their commentary you could form an idea of that person’s tastes. In the days of the internet before
comprehensive search engines like Google and Yahoo!, blogs served as a way to
filter the increasingly large plethora of website chaos. Once you found a blogger whose tastes were
palatable to you, they could serve as an important portal to the bedlam of the
internet. (Blood, 2000:7-16)
Blogs have since become more than
just lists of links, often serving as a personal diary for their author and as
part of a larger blog community. They are
now a way for everyone to plug himself or herself into the world of
interconnected hypertext. At first,
those who were blogging needed extensive technological knowledge, but with the
launch of websites like Blogger.com in 1999 and Typepad, blogging became easy
and accessible, and most importantly—free.
Millions of people now have their own blog, and the numbers are only
growing. There is something very
compelling to the blog phenomenon. The
personalization of cyberspace is growing: we have created a huge network of
close-knit groups of people, many of whom will never meet each other. (Stone, 2004:13-31)
Biz Stone calls blogs ‘digital
entities sprinkled throughout the vastness of cyberspace’ (Stone,
2004:192). A blog is more than just a
series of essays, chronologically organized.
They are a reaching out of one personality for others; we do not post
only dull essays online: with the flexibility of hypertext and the power to
share multimedia files online they have become a sort of guided stroll through
people’s consciousness, a way to learn indirectly about them in much the same
way you would meeting them in person. When
we meet someone, we do not simply state the bare facts about ourselves. We give opinions, visual cues to our likes
and dislikes; we make small talk and tell jokes. Blogs can be considered a digital extension
of a person, even more so than on a webboard or in a MUD, or, as Andreas
Kitzmann puts it, ‘a way to make one's life significant through the feedback
and support of readers.’ (2003:56) A
comment left on your blog or even just a hit to your stat counter is a very
clear indication that others are acknowledging your existence.
Blogs are yet another way to
recreate yourself online. Your audience
knows only what you want them to know, and you are protected from further
scrutiny by the vast anonymity of the internet.
It is up to you how much you erase the line between remaining anonymous
and intimacy with whoever encounters your online presence. It is possible to write highly intimate
details about your life without ever revealing who you are, but the more
details you tell, the more gripping your blog will be to others: ‘The best
weblogs are those that convey the strongest personality.’ (Blood, 2002:xi-xii)
Blogs are places where one can
expect an answer to rhetorical questions, support when you have a bad day at
work, and congratulations when you do well.
They are also a place where you can share pictures of your life. Pictures ground a blog in reality. In the textual world of the internet, the
ability for anyone to share pictures with the world is what makes the immediacy
of blog-writing more apparent. ‘Visual
imagery is the best way to capture moments.’
(CNN.com interview with Mena Trott, 10.8.2005) Some people even bypass writing about their
lives and instead show pictures.
There is a couple in Canada, Kenn
and Michelle, who do just that. To date
they have posted over 10,000 pictures with simple captions on their website
(http://kenn-michelle.ca:8080/pictures.php) while still never writing much
about themselves. It is incredible to
watch their well-documented lives, and yet they are not extraordinary people. They are simply living, taking pictures of
their growing family, and putting the pictures online for friends and family to
see. As John Suler wrote:
Let's face it, what made computers and cyberspace
take to public use like wild fire was the fact that we weren't just reading
text, but rather interacting with windows, icons, and pictures - and
experiencing the sense of space and place that images create. (26.6.2005)
It is seductive to a person writing
online to get responses from others on the internet. Typing online then becomes more than pouring
your feelings into a void. Eventually,
you may build up an audience of avid readers, ones who will expect regular
updates from you. Knowing that people
are depending on you to come up with something amusing or interesting for them
to read regularly brings a new awareness to life. There is a certain pressure of obligation
that popular bloggers feel to post, and if they do not update their blog
regularly there is a need to justify the time spent away from their audience. Blogging takes time, especially blogging
every day, and it is a big commitment to decide to write regularly in a space
that you may have once regarded as a place to vent your feelings, not really expecting
anyone else to find it. Being aware that
there is an audience to your life can make you self-conscious: there is no way
to get away from the knowledge that everything you do is a potential blog post
and that there is an audience out there, waiting to be fed: ‘The danger of
technology is that is demands to be fed.’
(Turkle, 1995:107) There is no
escape from that knowledge.
Popular blogger Stephanie
Pearl-McFee, otherwise known as the ‘Yarn Harlot’ (www.yarnharlot.ca) often
finds herself deliberately capturing moments of her life to share with her
blog’s audience. It has even spread to
her family. Stephanie arrived back from
a short trip only to find her house, unusually, sparkling clean:
As I sat quietly pondering this…Joe
approached me with a cold beer extended.
How did I do?’ he asked, beaming
with pride.
‘Joe...good job dude. Seriously good job. I'm impressed.’ […] Joe
puffed out his chest and surveyed his mighty domain before he sat down beside
me.
‘Steph?’
‘Yeah Joe?’
‘You're going to tell the blog
about this right? That I did ok?’
Who knew? Reporting to you is a behavioural tool. Who knew?
(11.4.2005)
Stephanie’s blog has recently taken
an interesting turn. As a very popular
knitting blogger, she landed a book deal and is currently touring both the U.S. and Canada on a
book tour. She gets to meet, in person,
hundreds of her regular blog readers, but also many people whose blogs she
reads herself. These meetings are a
perfect example of what happens when virtual friends meet. It is very interesting to ‘witness’ these
meetings, by reading both perspectives when Stephanie meets someone and blogs
about it, and so does the person she met.
Recently, Stephanie met Ryan Morrissey of Mossy Cottage Knits at the Seattle
stop on her book tour. Stephanie said of
meeting Ryan:
It was like meeting superheroes. It was like one of your favourite imagined
people just materialized in front of you and was everything you dreamed and
more. Ryan cried a few knitterly tears… (5.8.2005)
Ryan’s feelings were nearly the
same. They were both in awe of meeting
one another, as if they had not been quite sure that the other person was real,
and the confirmation that they were made the previous relationship they enjoyed
even more meaningful. Ryan also had strong
feelings about their meeting:
I am rarely, if ever, celebrity- or
star-struck. Perhaps it was because
Stephanie is the first out-of-state knit-blog e-friend I’ve met, and
represented all the other knitting e-friends that have brightened my life so intensely
and wonderfully over the last couple of years.
Maybe it was a one-degree of separation thing because just the day
before she had been with Rachael, an e-friend whom I also have not met, so I
was very aware that Stephanie had ‘Rachael dust’ on her. Maybe it was just the excitement of meeting ‘the
real thing’ after years of the one-dimensionality of photos. (5.8.2005)
Stephanie’s posts have become
slightly surreal while on her book tour, as she tends to blog every major life
event, and speaking to a crowd is a big deal in any ordinary person’s life. While Stephanie is speaking to a room, she
also takes pictures while people in the audience are taking pictures of her;
while she is talking about blogging to an in- person audience of people who read
her blog, she is also preparing another blog entry, and they are preparing to
blog about her blogging about them.
The whole tour is a strange and exciting experience to her. Stephanie never imagined that her little blog
about knitting would take on a life of its own, and that people would buy a
book she wrote.
Writing again about her Seattle stop, she said
the following:
I was almost hysterical. I know that this might not occur to you, when
you see these pictures, but I am taking them. All those people are looking at me. On a stage.
With a microphone. Here I am,
some sort of…weird Canadian knitter trucking a sock around the US on some
bizarre trip that I can't figure out how I got on, and all of those people are
looking at me. (5.8.2005)
Sometimes meetings of online
friends do not go so well as Stephanie and Ryan’s did. The relationship stays more in the head than
in reality, and the people in the relationship serve only to embody the others’
fantasy-person. Real life can be too
real for that fantasy, and shatter the online closeness of the people. Sherry Turkle writes about this situation,
giving the case of a man and woman who met online and formed an intense
relationship. They talked online for
hours, and decided after a time to meet in person. This was quite a large commitment, as they
lived across the country from each other.
The man flew across the U.S.
to meet his online love, and there the bubble burst. She was nice, but not his dream-woman. He returned home disappointed, and reread
their conversations: online, everything can be easily archived and often is. Upon rereading his whole relationship with
this woman, he saw nothing beyond a friendship.
The passionate love affair he had been having turned out to be mostly in
his head, and being able to review the whole relationship’s transcripts proved
that to him: ‘When everything is in the log and nothing is in the log, people
are confronted with the degree to which they construct relationships in their
own minds.’ (Turkle, 1995:207)
The physical world still remains an
important one, then, for virtual friends.
The internet can provide us with constant intellectual contact; we can
read people’s personal diaries and comment on them, becoming part of a group. We can be as close as two minds can be,
constantly, but we still cannot quite replace the impact of looking someone
else in the eye, shaking their hand, or even exchanging a tear-filled hug with
someone we have known for years but never met in person.
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