Yesterday I had this completely impromptu blog-writer-get-together. Of course, I didn’t even think of it that way until we started talking about blogs… I was just getting together to hang out with meghan, and she had apparently talked with mopsa earlier in the day about going to this (turned out to be fairly awful) variety show at the BLB. (Incidentally, I happen to know the person who designed and built the current BLB website, and wouldn’t it be funny if mopsa and/or any other readers also knew that person!)
Anyway, we skipped out on the show after the second bad poet, and ended up (after briefly loosing each other) at pizza luce. (whose site I won’t link, because it sucks ass). The topic of blogs only came up briefly, and mostly in the middle of one of mopsa’s many anecdotes, but when it did, it felt rather odd to be actually talking about something that had, until that moment, been purely electronic. Behind the screens, so to speak.
I have talked a bit with Laura about my blog, but other than that, any times I’ve mentioned it I’m usually giving someone the URL. I have been, once or twice, surprised by someone mentioning something they read on the blog, but otherwise, blogging and reality have scarcely met at all. Blog, meet reality. Reality, meet blog.
I’ve had this experience before–in reverse–when I first got into webpages and stuff, I met this girl who lived in Iowa. We met at a con. She and I ended up having a (mostly) electronic relationship, but have met (with mixed results) in reality a few times since. Every time it’s that same weird disconnect. We’re not the same people online as we are in reality. I mean, we’re the same, but we’re not.
If I were being particularly philosophical, I would wonder which I’d rather be, but then I’d have to draw boundaries. (Are video games online/electronic reality, or reality reality? This gets especially blurry when you start to consider my recent ebay addiction.)
I used to be very into thinking about these kinds of issues. I read “life on the screen”, “Hamlet on the Holodeck” and “Interface Culture” over 3 years ago! (Which now seems like an eternity.) I actually have a smallish collection of these investigations of the “new” electronic frontier at home, but it’s been a long time since I felt they were pertinent. I guess there is another reason I don’t tend to buy them anymore as well–seems like most of the new ones are all about money and/or power. Products of the failed .com era, I guess. I don’t find them nearly as interesting, although some of the newer ones (about why it failed) are on my list… I find the personal narratives the most interesting, I think. Somewhere, under my facade of indifference, I’m a people person–an electronic-people person.