Blogging: Exhibitionism for a New Generation
LiveJournal, MySpace, Blogger, and Yahoo 360 have already done their best to suck me in. Yet just when I thought I couldn’t blog enough, three more ads pop up on my screen offering a community where I can share pictures, share my thoughts, and share my life with complete strangers all over the world at the expense of nothing more than a little time and a trusty computer.
Yes good reader, I have found myself in the pits of blog despair, those late nights when I stare at the computer screen in an effort to find the right words to share with those I’ve never seen, never will see, and who will only see me through the beauty of my words and the mundane hours of my written life. So why do I keep doing it? Why do any of us keep doing it? If you look on any given blog site, the number of members is amazing, not to mention the number of hits to the individual blogs. I’m not talking about news blogs here. I’m talking about the personal rants of the millions of people out there who want to do nothing more than share the details with someone…anyone it seems, who will read, comment, then go on their merry way leaving nothing lingering of whatever judgement they may have passed on the writer.
It’s journaling. It’s keeping a diary for those who get writer’s cramp way too easily. In the old days, a kept journal was something to be hidden from curious eyes. The soul baring lines could indeed cause one an infinite amount of humiliation and faked sick day at school/work/the dinner table. Now, to keep a secret journal on-line is pointless. People want others to read the details, and not only that, but comment on them as well. It’s confession for the non-Catholics and absolution for everyone’s sinful side. We believe that if we put it out there, even so far as to cyber-publish some of the things we’d never even tell our spouses, just one encouraging word from someone else will give us that fix, the drug that calms us and reminds us that we’re not alone, that our lives must not be as pathetic as we think they are if even one person out there reads about them.
It’s also a double edged pleasure. To read someone else’s thoughts is an invasion, a trespass that we are allowed in the world of online blogging. We take a strange guilty happiness in reading of everyone else’s problems, of their joys, of their losses. At times it reminds us that there is hope. Other times it simply reminds us that maybe our lives aren’t as bad as they appear to me. If ever you needed proof that someone is worse off than you, sign up for any blog site out there and start reading. it won’t take long.
In a world where political correctness is king, blogging has become the epitome of free speech and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Blog sites serve as networking areas, friend finders, and discussion boards for every interest the mind could think of. They serve as our sounding board when the world wants to fight us and our time passer when work won’t finish fast enough. It’s the new way to reach out and touch someone and the best way to watch the soul of society grow and change. It’s the insomniacs best friend and the lonely being’s only friend.
Do your good deed for the day, those of you out there who haven’t yet found the blog world. Get a blog. Write in it. Share it.
Help the rest of us live vicariously through you.
