A good friend, K, told me once that he doesn’t want anyone to know or read his blog. He says he likes keeping it that way. I think it is easier to spill one’s guts out knowing NO ONE (or at least no one you know) reads your innermost thoughts and ramblings.
It’s becoming quite antithetical, this blog issue. It’s becoming so popular that everyone has a blog now. It’s everywhere. Corporate bigwigs are highly interested in blogging because blogging works. Blogging makes us human. It taps into the YOU which the Internet de-humanises.
When I first started blogging, I shared the same idea like my good friend. I wanted to be as anonymous as I could be. It’s easier to say what you really want to say when no one recognises you. Online, I don’t have a ‘face’ or ‘identity’. I could be anything I wanted to be. I could say things I couldn’t or wouldn’t mouth in public. I guess we all have that persona. That’s what social conditioning does to us people. We grow up adapting to our roles and we cannot truly shed this or that role simply because we want to shoot our mouths off.
Online, I could write things which sometimes cannot be said aloud.
Online, I am smarter and faster with my repartee.
Online, I am capable of lots of ideas which come tumbling, one after another.
Verbalising takes the magic and mystery away from the written word. It peels away the aura of words. I guess that’s why poetry and novels hold our attention. When I read, I share that magic with myself. When I speak, I imagine that I share this magic but then again, not everyone understands.
Over time, friends and family started to realise I kept a blog. Which is rather unnerving because I find that my goals became blurred. Did I write FOR them? Did I write for myself? Who is my reader now?
K also mentioned that some blogs tend to go the way of self-aggrandizement. They glorify themselves. Publicity whore is a remark I have heard many a time. You don’t have to go far to read blogs like that. They start becoming slaves to their readers, and I feel over time, they lose that persona which they initially created.
I respect K and his wish to keep his blog as personal and private as possible. I know what blogging can do – it’s not thoroughly bad to keep a blog (there are many business blogs which create enough PR for them to be profitable) but it can rise above its master/mistress and swallow us whole if we forget who is in charge.
I hope I never go down that road…
wow, k seems an interesting guy to know. who is he? or is he a fictional character?
hensem
i’d like to defer. blogging is THE way to promote and glorify oneself. to attract the girls/guys with one’s writing, to impress the people with one’s experiance and his/her sophistication. it is THE path to stardom. there is so much more to blogging than a simple journal writing too….hehe.
hensem
hi hensem,
of course that is true. but it again depends on what the blog owner wants to do. some blog owners just want to remain obscure and hidden away, squirrelling their own thoughts. if one blogs for business, then it’s all about sharing and showing one’s expertise and knowledge. 😉
My sister also prefer her blog to be left alone, as for me I am ok about it as I create one to keep in touch with colleague and friends. Your blog has ADvert, will google redirect some traffic due to this.. I am not sure how this ADvert thing works..
What a dilemma! To blog or not to blog.
hi soo: Don’t know about that. But just started it on a whim. We’ll see how that goes.
hi lcs: yes, it is a dilemma. sometimes i get confused too. do i say what i want to say or do i say what others want to hear?