More than once, it has occurred to me how blogging is entirely based on this narcissistic presumption that one actually has something interesting to say. Why go to the effort make your writing public if no one is going to read it? I’ll admit that this sometimes bothers me, because I cannot abide the type of people that constantly need to be the center of attention or whose favorite topic of conversation is themselves. I fear that in keeping a blog, I end up placing myself with these categories of people. Most of the time though, I can move beyond these insecurities about why I keep this blog, and I’m actually quite glad these applications exist.
I’m usually loathe to admit this publicly, but I’ve been keeping a Livejournal since senior year of high school. Livejournal (for those who don’t know), is just another blogging client (although it allows a bit more privacy because it enables you to limit your reader base only to chosen Livejournal members). Livejournal has a bit of a reputation for being a haven of teenage angst, and it’s probably true that my own blog there began as such. However, it proved to be the number one way of keeping in touch with high school friends, and with two exceptions, the only people I still keep in touch with from high school are those who also have Livejournals.
When we finished high school, my friends and I all dispersed across the country, began separate lives at separate schools. With time zone differences, class and extracurricular schedules to coordinate, and admittedly a little bit of laziness it was hard to make time for phone calls (infrequency of conversation necessitates long blocks of time to adequately catch up with each other). But when you write something and just post it online, whoever wants to read it can do so on their own time. And the comment feature of these sites allows a blog to maintain the dynamic nature of a conversation.
Anyways, the reason this all came up is that the other day, I spent a considerable portion of my afternoon catching up on the blogs various friends of mine are writing. During college, other than my friends on LJ, I knew very few people who kept blogs, and (for previously mentioned reasons) it always felt like a bit of a geeky thing to do. But when I graduated college, I started this blog. And a significant number of my friends followed suit. And again, I am glad that they have.
I kind of wonder if maybe this form of friendship maintenance seems less sincere to the older crowd. A while back I was discussing the merits of Facebook with a friend who had deactivated her account – I was telling her I like the site much more now that I’ve left school, because it is so easy to keep up with my friends. I mean really, you don’t even have to talk to them! All it takes is a click of the mouse and you have pictures, gossip, know where they are working, whom they are dating….Which was why she didn’t like the site. She felt like you couldn’t sort out your “true” friends. And I agree to some degree – I think I would have lost touch with a lot of those high school friends had they not had Livejournals. And my really close friends, I still talk to them outside of blogs or Facebook. But also am glad that these types of websites allow me to keep up with people that otherwise would have fallen wayside in my mind. At least this way, a few years down the road I won’t be wondering whatever happened to Susie Q and regret not having her email address or telephone number.
4 comments:
I think the ability to have that dynamic conversation on LJ is part of the reason I always like it better/felt it was a stronger connection to friends than sites like facebook. Yeah, I could see what a person was up to on facebook, but because there was no real back and forth, no talking to each other, it didn't feel like much of a real connection to me. So I did come back, but I seriously cut down on my number of "friends", too.
I know where you are coming from, but there is a LOT of back and forth on facebook. Not with everybody, but it actually ends up being a lot more than on LJ, with wall posts, and messaging, and comments...
You know, I was actually talking to another friend about the whole facebook phenomenon a while back. Though I have a lot of facebook friends, I do try to keep it down to people I'm actually interested in maintaining relationships with - I hate it when people I meet once and will probably never meet again friend me. And sometimes I do feel like its kind of lame, keeping in touch on facebook rather than via more direct means of contact. But she was saying she actually finds it a lot more "real" than like, having a long phone conversation every once in a while, or emailing exchanges, because with commenting and status updates, you get a lot more about daily life nuances that you don't get when you cram a months worth of information into a phone call or email. I think she has a point there too.
Hey Tala!
I think I've heard about the Wildlife Center of VA, probably a little from you and I think from various internet searches...it looks like a really great place. I'm looking for something to do over the summer that has to do with wildlife, so I'll definitely add them to my list to check out. I'll also have to look into doing one of my fourth year rotations there if possible. I'm probably going to track the small animal curriculum, so I'll only have a few free blocks to do fun things like that, but I really want to make sure that I get to fit some wildlife experience in somewhere!
I completely agree with your post, by the way. I have a tendency to be a bit of an introvert, and I actually have to build up huge amounts of courage to even give someone a phone call (I know, I'm ridiculous). A lot of times I would let this get in the way of staying in touch with people. But I find communicating via facebook, blogs, and IM a whole lot less terrifying, and so I've definitely been a lot better at it than I was after graduating from high school, for example. And, as you said, even if I don't have direct contact with people all the time, it's so nice to have a general idea of what's going on in everyone's lives. I feel like it keeps the connection there.
AND you can meet all kinds of cool people on LiveJournal 8-D
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