Blogging

Note one: I went to a party this weekend and was teased mercilessly (but in good humor) for having a weblog. Everyone kept asking me if the evening's activities were "blogworthy." I smiled silently, but secretly thought about the digital camera that I've been obsessively keeping in my bag ever since I received it for Christmas.

Note two: One of my friends read my weblog recently and mentioned that the person on it is not the one he knows. When I asked for some clarification, he said that he was just glad for the context of real life. Another friend told me that my postings are in keeping with my "RL" identity. They're both interesting observations (and both made by individuals who study communication and culture and know about this stuff), but at some point all of this gets very Turkle-esque and the debate about online/offline identity formation rages on. However, I find the roots of this discussion fascinating, so I purchased (finally!) a used copy of Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in the hopes that I could get some clarity. (Side note: Apparently, the person who owned this book before me was somewhat obsessive - the underlining looks as though it was completed using a ruler. Also, I've never seen such neat-looking braces!) (Side-side note: I wonder if I tend to be much more parenthetical on my weblog than I do in the "real world." I'm not sure what that statement means, but it sounds good. I need coffee.)

Note three: In keeping with the propensity for bloggers to comment on and link to articles about blogging, I offer a piece from the NYT - My So-Called Blog.

If this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy. The new forms of communication are madly contradictory: anonymous, but traceable; instantaneous, then saved forever (unless deleted in a snit). In such an unstable environment, it's no wonder that distinctions between healthy candor and ''too much information'' are in flux and that so many find themselves helplessly confessing, as if a generation were given a massive technological truth serum...Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they get it. And everything parents fear is true. (For one thing, their children view them as stupid and insane, with terrible musical taste.) But the linked journals also form a community, an intriguing, unchecked experiment in silent group therapy -- a hive mind in which everyone commiserates about how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison.

For some reason, this article reminds me of Michael Weiss' The Clustered World in which he outlines 62 demographic clusters (with names like, "Kids & Cul-de-sacs," whose members read Golf Digest, listen to soft-rock radio, and like eating low-fat sour cream) - but instead of occuring in the real world, the "clustering" happens all online. Ok, so maybe that isn't the most profound statement; I mean, cliques are a part of the "real life" experience of any high schooler, but there's something else going on here. And, in my inimitable fashion, I can't really articulate it - at least, not right now. Perhaps you can.

I really do need some coffee.