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April 29, 2005
Guilty Fascination
When I first became interested in 'blogging' I was under the assumption that the constituents of its universe were comprised of primarily independent journalists, pundits and other pseudo-academics who used their websites as a way to comment on all those tasty nuggets of information too risque for print.
Though the aforementioned romanticized individuals certainly exist, the majority of 'bloggers' that I have come in contact with exist on sites like LiveJournal and the other countless services like it. Needless to say, I am utterly fascinated by the phenomenon and find myself wasting the fleeting precious moments of my life winding my way through its interconnected web of high school drama, self loathing and a desperate desire to be loved and accepted.
For those of you not familiar with the service, anyone interested in having a blog can sign up for free and begin posting information on the internet, unfettered by the bonds of censorship. The true beauty of LiveJournal is the comments system and friends pages which alerts you to other users and their similarly inane posts. Before you know it you are reading about what some girl in Texas ate for breakfast and the results of some quiz she took on which Civil War biographer she is most like.
Though the content you ingest is massive your brain never gets full because the information is comprised entirely of empty calories. The aforementioned statement could be cause for calls of incongruence to my prior claim of fascination but I am entranced by the notion that these journals are the places where youth come to vent their myriad tangle of daily frustrations. Some posts seem entirely too personal to be shared on the open forum of the internet by people who often claim to lead very private lives. I get the impression that a majority of this content is a desperately penned letter hastily encapsulated in an empty bottle to be cast into the sea in hopes that an understanding knight in shining armor on some far away beach would read it and subsequently come speedily to their rescue.
I, myself, am contented to reach down into the water, remove the parchment and chuckle as I peruse these private thoughts quickly deciding to replace the cork and toss it closer towards a distant shore when another gleam, cresting on a wave, catches my eye a few feet away.
I shudder to think of the impact this could have had on my life and those of my friends if we had access to it while still attending high school. My exploits in secondary academia were made confusing enough when AIM burst noisily onto the scene with the theatrics left in its wake something that, thankfully, I am now distanced from.
If you are interested in experiencing the phenomenon for yourself, here's a random one to start your journey.
Posted by Jon at April 29, 2005 06:15 PM