This article in the paper today caught my eye. It was called “There and Back again from the Blogosphere”. Normally I don’t care enough to blog about articles about blogging. It’s redundant in a sense don’t you think? But this one is from a local newspaper, the Philippine Daily inquirer and written by Tals Diaz. Here are excerpts from the article with comments from me of course:
“I blog, therefore I exist. So what about the rest of us who don’t blog?”
Well, people who don’t blog also exist don’t they? Existing is a matter of perception really. Who cares anyway if you blog or don’t?
“…I’ve wondered why bloggers would risk revealing really juicy, incriminating stuff about their private lives by recording it in the worldwide web, for the whole world to easily access. Or is it really latent exhibitionism? Conversely as bloggers click, enter and lurk around from private life to private life, is it just another form of voyeurism in the Google universe?”
I wonder about people revealing addresses, phone numbers and full names too. But this just made it sound like ALL bloggers do it, which is false. It just irked me when I read it. I have to agree with the voyeurism part though. People are just curious to see how other people live as well.
“And in the meantime, what’s left for us non-bloggers and reformed bloggers….who just don’t get it? Worry not, we are still good people! And yes, we still exist, albeit on the other side of the wormhole in cyberspace called the real world.”
And that my friends, was the last straw. That was also the ending of the article. What do bloggers look like to the rest of the uninformed world? Like idiots, who would much rather live in cyberspace among fellow bloggers than actually live their lives in the real world. Bloggers look delusional, preferring to write about “fantasy”. That’s the word the author uses. And that is word that made me hit the roof. I. Do. Not. Write. FANTASY.
I write about my dreams, how I feel, how I view the world, how I perceive things around me. The things that I write about are REAL. Calling it fantasy feels belittling. Just because a person has a different perspective of a particular event doesn’t mean it’s fantasy.
I don’t think that bloggers are “cool”. I don’t have that attitude. Nor do I feel that non-bloggers are unimaginative and backward. I blog. If you don’t blog, that’s your thing. If you blog like me, that’s good. Maybe you can give me tips. I don’t get which pompous, self-important ass made her feel that bloggers belong to a clique. I don’t think so.
What I didn’t get was the hostility I felt from the writer. Non-bloggers live in the real world (while bloggers don’t). That was the perception she was giving. And it’s unfair and inaccurate. Blogging gives people a sense that they exist yes. People read other people’s blog because they wanna know if this person is going through the same shit. People are just trying to muddle through in this life. And blogging chronicles the shitty as well as the beauty of it. Bloggers write because they wanna share what they went through, hoping that someone else is going through the same thing. In my case, every post feels like I placed a message in a bottle, hoping that one day I’ll open another bottle with a message for me. The writer may have been trying to present both sides of the coin, but it just felt like she was trying too hard to say nice things about blogging you know. If she felt that blogging was a bad experience for her then she should have stuck with that, rather than trying to be nice. It’s like looking at someone smile at you through clenched teeth.
Now that I’ve griped, I can move on.