Here’s one for the masses…
Does your family read your blog?
I was celebrating our nation’s birth this weekend with parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles and an aunt, and somehow the topic of my blog came up. I think my sister said something. She knows about it but doesn’t read it, just likes to kid me “why don’t you BLOG about it?” when something bothers me.
“What’s a blog?” asks grandma.
“Is it like Facebook?” asks my aunt, whose children are on it.
I explain that it’s a website where I can go and write things and post them, and people can post comments on what I have written.
“What do you write?” my aunt continues.
“Just… stuff… about what’s going on in my life. Essays, kind of a journal-y thing… just stuff.”
“Can I read it?”
Crickets.
“I don’t even get to read it,” my mom sighs. “She won’t tell me where it is.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, this blog thing,” says grandma, throwing up her hands and disappearing into the kitchen.
“You don’t NEED to read it,” I interject. “It’s just about what’s going on with me and you know that stuff.”
“We don’t know about what’s going on with you,” my aunt wheedles. “We hardly see you.”
“It’s personal stuff. It would be like letting you read my diary.” The thought of my conservative family reading some of what I write makes me shudder. And the thought of my aunt seeing ANYTHING I write about the guys I date just makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
“Then why do you post it on the internet?”
Why DO we post it on the internet, guys? Is it like putting your art on display in a gallery and not in your own home? These anonymous blogs that we write – they’re not just anonymous because we’re afraid of creeps who prey on the kids stupid enough to post their home addresses on MySpace. Does the anonymity make us feel brave? And without it, are we scared – and of what?
How long does it take us to really open up to someone when becoming involved in a new friendship? Awhile, maybe. How long does that take when starting a new romantic relationship? Could be a long time. But I told you some of my innermost thoughts and feelings the first time you clicked onto my page. A lot of you guys have done the same for me. And what do we all-of-a-sudden feel for each other? When a blogger-friend posts about something dramatic going on in his/her life, we send hugs and good vibes in our comments and we mean it. We check back in to see what’s going on. We worry about each other and cheer for each other. When we’re the ones upset, the comments from our blogger-friends make us feel better sometimes than the ones from the people in our everyday lives.
Maybe the blogosphere has given us the chance to find people and friends we can’t find on our own because we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves in public. And what I like to call the Six Degrees of Blogroll serves as an introduction when we can’t be there to shake hands with a stranger and say “No way! You love her writing too?” and have a good laugh and a cold beer.
Most of what I write is harmless. I don’t really care who reads my posts about meatballs and White Castle and haircuts. But in “real life,” the heart-on-the-sleeve look doesn’t go over so well. It’s too raw, too emotional, unprofessional, immature, embarrassing even. I just got a book called “You’re Not the Only One” last week (in which you can find a wonderful piece by our very own Paige Jennifer!) and it’s composed of stories from the internet, posts from real bloggers around the world sharing bits of their lives. I was amazed, truly amazed, at what people will share. From laugh-out-loud moments to the most intimate love stories to the most horrifying tales of abuse and pain, these bloggers laid it bare. Reading it felt like when I was writing about E this year, or Tim last year. Catharsis? Maybe. Bravery? Perhaps. Did their moms read those?
There’s something about a good blog that bonds the reader with the author more than any editorialized, sanitized autobiography ever can.
So I told my aunt she can read all the salacious details of my life when my memoir is published.
10 Comments so far
Leave a comment
I love this- and I think you’re totally right. I’ve wondered a lot what it is that makes it so easy for me to open up on my website but so hard for me to do it in day to day life. I used to think it was the anonymity, until I began letting it slip away by making facebook friends & giving out my real name/address for the postcard exchange, or by posting pictures without my face blurred. I think it’s just a save haven knowing that this is my writing, and people can judge it, but since I’m not saying it, I don’t see the rejection as much? Who knows, but I enjoy it!
[Reply]
By sandy on 07.06.08 2:24 pm | Permalink
I’ve thought about this a lot too. Why doesn’t it bother me to have strangers reading the intimate details of my life and yet I would never let my family read it?? I still haven’t found the answer but I really enjoy blogging and “meeting” other bloggers. There’s the ability to see into the lives of people that we normally would never meet and I think that’s really powerful too. Definitely interesting to think about!
[Reply]
By e. on 07.06.08 5:50 pm | Permalink
You’re totally right on a lot of things here. I really believe that no blog is fully anonymous because somehow you’ll always be found thanks to Facebook, etc. I made the fatal error of sharing my blog link with friends and family from the beginning and as its evolved it’s been more of a headache than anything else. I would love to be fully anonymous online rather than be censored, but that’s unfortunately what I have to do now.
[Reply]
By Jessica on 07.06.08 8:23 pm | Permalink
I often think about this too. And you’re right, we’re open on our blogs because we know others can relate to us, and we want the feedback and in some cases, the validation
And I wish I could make friends as fast in real life as I can in the blogosphere! But I’m right there with you, if my adult family members ever found it…well…that would be a case much worse than DD uncovering it!!!!
[Reply]
By Supergirl on 07.07.08 8:12 am | Permalink
I have visited and revisited this topic a million times. My mom does read (and writes her own) blog. I don’t mind because I tell her most everything but sometimes I do wish I could vent about things she does that piss me off and I can’t.
Just this weekend she was showing MY AUNT her blog and then showed her one of my posts… thank Gob she stopped there and didn’t let my aunt read on b/c I may or may not have mentioned her in the past.
Something about having support from blog “friends” around the world is reassuring. You can seek advice without ever having to encounter the people who read you, unless you want to.
Meh, I say be careful who you allow to know where you are. I’ve errored on the side of too generous.
[Reply]
By Lindz on 07.07.08 1:33 pm | Permalink
Great post! I would absolutely die if anyone in my family read my blog or even some of my friends for that matter who know me but don’t know some things about me. I take refuge in my blogger friends and my relative anonymity.
[Reply]
By girlinterrupted1218 on 07.07.08 10:06 pm | Permalink
I feel like if much of what one writes about involves friends, family and lovers then it is almost imperative that a clear demarcation is kept between the blog-o-sphere and the real-world-o-sphere. For those of us that don’t blog about politics or science or birding in Papua New Guinea, we almost need to have one “sphere” of friends to provide us with killer material for the other. I am not so sure that it makes us brave as much as it just lets us be ourselves. Personally it is not so much the friends and family that I would worry about as it is the girl and boyfriends. Ms Stapler, I assume that E wasn’t reading the play by play during the “troubles”. Was he? If he was or if you have dealt with this in the past, is it weird? Does not letting your non-blogger friends in on the fun deprive your blogger friends of the complete truth? If you do let ‘real’ friends (or boyfriends) read your posts are you doomed to censor your writing?
[Reply]
By bill on 07.08.08 12:31 am | Permalink
…
[Reply]
By bill on 07.08.08 1:08 am | Permalink
My grandma has read my blog for a good year now. In fact, she has a link to the page on her desktop, along with probably a hundred other sites she keeps a quick click away. It’s made for, uh, interesting conversation, to say the least, especially when I have to do damage control with new boyfriends because I haven’t yet had a chance to warn G’ma that, “no, so-and-so does not yet know I blog, let alone write about him, and so if you could refrain from referring to that episode I posted last week about so-and-so, that would be swell…”
And then there’s always the “but why don’t you just write in your diary?” questions from my mom, who does. not. get. the. concept. and “why would you air dirty laundry online?”
I’m fairly certain it’s something every blogger goes through, the qualm of “how anonymous should I remain?” And even more interesting, I find a blog to be like this ongoing Other Relationship you have to break to new love interests. Like, “Oh, um, by the way, there’s sort of this … this THING that I do that you should probably know about…”
[Reply]
By missinsidegirl on 07.12.08 9:58 pm | Permalink
Tahnks for posting
[Reply]
By WetfleereeZew on 08.02.08 9:58 pm | Permalink
Leave a comment