blog sounds like bog and log

(This entry is written entirely in the stream-of-consciousness style. I gave myself a topic, "Blogging," and just ran with it. I did not reread what I had written until I was completely finished, and, aside from a word or two, did not change anything after I typed it. Here's what resulted ...)

A friend and I were having a discussion last weekend about just how odd this whole blogging thing is. Not so much the writing of the blogs, which, though different than most of the other writing I have done in my life, comes pretty easily. I mean, who doesn't enjoy talking about themselves? But the reading of other peoples' blogs brings up some very interesting quandries. Let's say you discover a blog of a person who you do not know, but you enjoy their writing style, so you go on their site every so often and read it just to hear what they have to say. Nothing too strange or complicated about that. But in the process of reading their blog, you, in a way, get to know a lot about who this person is, at their core, this person who you've never even met face-to-face, inadvertantly becomes a part of your life. It's almost like they become a celebrity. If after reading their blog for a while, you finally do meet this person in some random, wierd coincidence, how would you feel? If it were me, I'd feel like I was meeting someone famous, simply because I know all these things about them and their life and they don't know me from Eve. But maybe that's just me. What my friend and I were actually talking about is when you discover that someone you actually DO know has a blog, and you begin to read it. They recount stories of what has been happening in their life, share opinions and thoughts, and you read them. Does this count as a conversation? Technically, you're getting caught up on their life, but they don't know it, so where does that leave you? I have several friends whose blogs I read pretty regularly (see list at right), so I know some stuff about what they're doing ... what they choose to share anyway ... but when I see them in my real life, I feel a little bit wierd saying, "Hey, I read on your blog that blah blah blah." It makes me feel kind of stalkerish. So instead, I'll just pretend that everything they tell me is new news since I have not technically been told yet. Is that strange, or do other people feel that way too? This friend and I talked about how this is like the newest form of communication where you're not even directing your communications to any one individual, but simply out into the void, for whoever wants to know. Is that a comment on our society today? I don't know. Are we getting too lazy to pick up a phone and call our friends, so we write a blog instead, or do we blog for other reasons entirely? Probably the latter, but I think the strangeness of the blogosphere is something very interesting to think about. Oh, and then of course there's MySpace. Sure, it's just another venue to blog, create a profile, and basically advertise yourself for ... I don't know what. But it's another thing that can put you in the unreal position of knowing someone without actually knowing them. Or knowing things about someone you do know without them personally telling you. One of my stranges experiences has been finding out that two of my friends were dating via MySpace. (Not meaning they had an "online" relationship, but that I found out about it via MySpace, just to clarify.) There is just something unsettling about that. Perhaps it upset me that MySpace knew about their relationship before I did, personally. Or perhaps it again just made me feel like a voyeur. But thinking about it now, I feel like these real friendships have somehow morphed into online friendhips through MySpace, and that makes me feel cheated somehow. My cousin recently posted a bulletin about disconnecting yourself from MySpace, and instead calling your friends up personally. Purge yourself of those "friends" who only have you on their list to add another number. The ones you want to keep, get their phone numbers, or even just e-mail addresses, and contact them personally. Then disconnect from the electronic friendships, in order to reconnect to the real, tangible friendships. It's a good idea. But I'll probably never do it. My cousin probably wasn't going to do it either, even though she proposed the idea. And I really couldn't tell you why, for either of us. Maybe in a few years, the world will tire of the weblog, and the online-profile-friend-space-type websites. I kind of hope so, as hypocritical as that may sound, being a blogger/MySpacer myself.

The End.