Perverting the Act of Blogging

There are two kinds of blogs one might read: one read because of the content, or one read because of the author. Sometimes, in the latter scenario, you are interested in the author because you know them personally. It’s like those old irritating annual family update letters. But Way. More. Frequent.

I read several friends’ blogs. At first, this seems like the most brilliant idea. It seems a way to stay close when you are far – a means of connectedness and communication. You read what they write and you hear it as if spoken with their voice, and it automatically installs itself onto the canvas your mind invokes at their mention. But the problem, as these canvases are not perfect replications of every interaction but instead merely a “sense” of that person, is that your forget what you learned where. You forget whether you spoke to them last week about that interview two Mondays back, or whether you read about them speaking about their interview two Mondays back.

So some days you realize that you haven’t spoken with someone in ages, which you completely failed to realize all this time because you feel like you spoke last night online when you read their latest saga. Or you call someone and start to tell them the best story you’ve saved up and then they cut in, “ya…I read about that.” It’s insanely confusing. And more concerning still is that it allows one-sided relationships to develop, wherein one person blogs and another doesn’t, and effectively the writer’s life injects itself into reader’s life, but not the other way around. How lopsided, unfair, and sad. Moreover, the dual blogging friendship creates two feeds that shoot off in each other’s general direction but never (or rarely) mingle or converse. It’s such an odd product of the blogging age.

Um. Ya. And that’s it. My thoughts. Nutshell. End thesis. How’s that for a conclusion?