So am I a blogger or a journaler? Does it matter?
I'm a little slow to comment in my blog on this one because I've been thinking about blogging and why do I do it. The reason I haven't posted much is that I don't have a good answer. (Much more rambling in the extended post)
I think the thing I liked about blogs that I saw from my friends' blogs is the interaction between the ideas that people have. One person has idea X, and another person has idea Y that relates to X, and a third person has ideas A and B about ideas X and Y, and all of those people get to interact in cyberspace in interesting ways.
I think I like the idea of a blog as a different kind of communication medium. In a sense it can be like email in that people's comments can come and go and a dialog can swirl around a topic. But in a way that's different from email, the origin of the idea can be easily tracked. And with trackback you can also see all the other places that an idea went in other people's blogs. It's a strange kind of map of the genesis of an idea or conversation.
So the idea of a blog (a collection of links to other things?) and a journal (a personal narrative or commentary) isn't all that blogging's about to me. I think another neat aspect of blogging is that you get to put forth any persona that you want to in this medium. If no one online knows you in your "real" life, then you can be as outrageous or quiet or insecure or grandiose as you want. And if you do have links between the online world and the "real" world, then you can make them as fully inclusive or mutually exclusive as you want.
If I were into the online dating thing, then I think my blog could be another way for people to get to know things about me. But then again, if I know that people will be reading this (because why post it if no one will read it), won't that change the content of what I write? Because if I'm really a journaler (and pretty clearly my content is related to my life, my observations, my commentary on my intersection with the world at large), then is my blog the kind of "journal" that most people think of? I don't think of this as a true journal - there are no "Dear Diary" entries. But that's because I know that other people might be reading it.
I have considered having a separate "private" diary to write about the specifics of the things that I only allude to here (and my "real" life - the one inside of me that is not to be shared willy nilly with anyone who stumbles across these meanderings on the web). But then why blog at all? Why not just keep my little diary somewhere that no one else but me can read it/get to it, etc.?
I guess blogging, to me, comes down to wanting an interaction with the world outside my head. I spend an awful lot of time in here, and sometimes it's nice to see what goes on in other people's heads too. And it's surprising many times how many times (more often than not really) the stuff in my head (or heart) echoes the things that other people post in their blogs. And this all helps me realize that while I often feel very alone, I'm one interconnected little speck in cyberspace, and that if I'm there, there's someone else out there too. And isn't it nice to feel a little less alone?
Posted by cshell at February 17, 2004 10:45 PMhere's my two cents/thoughts:
i like blogging because having your own blog allows you to have good social manners in a way. without a blog, one would roam the 'net leaving comments strewn across many web sites, taking up space on other people's pages. having your own blog is like being able to invite people over to your house.
having a blog also gives you a hub from which to branch out and interact. your links/posts indicate what you're reading and where you're leaving comments, so in many ways the front page of my site acts like a temporal collection of bookmarks.
anyway, i say all of this to encourage you to go out and find sites that interest you and to start interacting on them, as i think that can help you figure out what you want to do with this blog. if you interact on sites that interest you, and you write about things that interest you, then you might find new visitors following those trackback links back to your site. meta seems particularly adept at this, though she often seems to do it by provocation :).
i haven't really built an audience for my blog yet (my blog is still mostly for me), but i do get spikes in attention when either (a) I trackback or comment on another blog and people follow those back to my blog, or (b) I write an entry that's interesting enough for strangers link to. Often the attention in (b) happens as a result of (a).
For example, I saw a post comparing Lieberman to Senator Palpatine. I commented on that post, leaving a link to an old entry on my blog that compared Lieberman to Gollum. Since that post, the Lieberman/Gollum entry has tripled my traffic and lead to some mildly entertaining comments. Still not as much fun as the Khleo Thomas fans, but entertaining nevertheless.
Posted by: Ken at February 18, 2004 02:07 AM