I’ve always had some kind of website- when I was 11 it was expage.com (a juvenile web-page builder that presents the user with many choices of how to terrorize any accidental viewer- my personal favorite was a pink-cloud background), then I moved on to getting “hosted,” and finally just resorted to simple blogs that I visit every 2-3 months. At first I was really into the whole website craze and spent a lot of time and consideration making my website presentable and interesting. Believe it or not there was a whole network of teenagers (mostly girls) who built sites similar to mine, but the goal was not to sell something or commemorate any particular interest. Our pages always were centered around a blog we wrote in about our daily teenage lives and would have an accompanying “about me” section and “guest-book.” These websites were a sort of social connection to the other website owners, but mostly it was just a hobby for us. Since the blogs would have mostly similar content (i.e.: the latest cd I bought and fell in love with, how unfair my parents were, and what a b*tch my best friend was being) I did feel some “pressure” to make mine as interesting as possible. This was done with added snarkyness and endless teenage angst. Not sure how effective it was, but it seemed to work.
My blogs now are abandoned 350 days of the year, and every so often I go back with enough rage or unusually high-pitched happiness and write something down. Sometimes it’s out of boredom. But what I write in those blogs now is mostly for myself, since I no longer really care if I have any “friends” or have other blogs that I link to or read. I think in that way I have less of a target audience, but I still catch myself trying to express an emotion in an overly showy way, as if keeping with the illusion that anyone will stumble upon and read it.
This blog is a part of a whole different universe of blogs- it forces us to write and think about our potential audience in a far different way than I had with my website or neglected live-journal. There is so much out there in the blog world that I’m really unfamiliar with- political blogs, blogs about gooey but diet-busting food, ones that rip apart Angelina’s latest baby announcement or how Jennifer Aniston really cannot get over it (I don't buy that, by the way). The point is blogs can be anything, really, because there is no moderator. I guess as students we’re not really used to this kind of forum, but this class is already so far apart from the other college courses I’ve taken that I’m open to the newness. And I'm happy that it’s a trial and error process, because that is as close to experiential education as I’ve gotten so far.
It’s a Beeping Problem
2 months ago
I too have kept a blog for the past three years. Well, if you consider logging in every two or three months to try and blog in one post the past... two or three months. In the beginning, I was the same as you, Lauren, basically writing with the sole objective of having my voice heard by my peers. It was never anything particularly meaningful, just the ramblings of early high school drama. It was big too; I remember the day I took a deep breath and "linked" the world to my blog through my AIM profile. Big stuff, I know.
ReplyDeleteAs I grew older, though, the blog for the world slowly became more private. My privacy preferences were slowly restricted more and more, until it reached the point that it is now- set to only allowing my boyfriend access. He's not an avid checker of updates; I have to tell him if I've written something that I'd particularly like for him to see. Most of the time though... the writing's just for me. Whether I've had a horrendous day and need to vent, or have had the perfect day and need to write it all down, it's nice knowing that I have a comfy, secluded, (mainly) just for me place to share.
It's kind of refreshing to go back and look at my old blogs (I'm sappy/nostalgic like that). The first I started before I moved to Boston, which is basically me thinking I could take on the world; the second started after I moved to Boston, which is basically me realizing that the world was a whole lot more real than I'd been prepared for; and the third is quite new and my baby, following my trek along a personal little goal that I've started.
I'm a reader of blogs, mainly the tacky gossip ones. And when the idea of keeping a class blog was introduced at the beginning of the semester, I was none-too-thrilled at the idea (as evidenced by this blog post, one of my many in an effort to catch up late in the game). As I've gone back and read over posts that kids in the class have created though... it's kind of neat. We all really do have a lot to say, and, if anything, this blog has given us a chance to say it.