Mod addressed the issue of living online - the yin and yang of voyeurism and exhibitionism via Facebook/Pinterest/etc, the addictiveness of 'connectedness', and whether these outlets in fact do make us more connected in this thought-provoking post.
The above quotes from the chapter "Something of Myself' from the book I am thisclose to finishing, Hitch-22, speak to this practice of self-expression, introspection and reaching, ever reaching, to others through the Internet.
Mod writes:
I constantly struggle with my online presence. Why do I have a blog? Why do I have a Facebook? Why am I sharing my life, my pictures, my thoughts with people I do not even know? Or people I don't know well enough? Are my pissed off clients going to Google me? Why does Pinterest make me happy and frustrated at the same time? Why do I read 10+ blogs daily? Ten. What is the point? What else could I be doing with my time?
This is a topic I think about frequently, and touched upon briefly in an October post. Why do I blog? Why do I post funny videos, silly cat pictures, moving photos on Facebook? The first is easy to answer, as I use this blog mostly as a journal of our married life in Texas (never much of a diarist, I am pleased to keep up with this). But have I become a diarist because I have an audience? How would this be different if no one had the URL and when I hit publish, no one saw what I had written? Would it be more honest? Less concerned with presenting a facade? (A facade of what, one may ask).
This may be answered in part by the second aspect of my online activities, Facebook, which I treat as my cyber water-cooler with attendant chit-chat. I enjoy sharing news that I think someone may enjoy or something to make my sister smile; mostly it is a vehicle for sharing humor or encouragement... so perhaps part of this conviviality and sociability are translated as the 'letters to home' or 'things I like' aspect of this blog.
Aurajoon, in the post Mod cites, says:
Friends, I will tell you that life lived when not a single person is looking is quite different than this online world. Things move a lot slower, quieter, and more simply. Days are longer, we speak softer, and somehow all those lost minutes of the day come together to form an extra hour or two to focus on the things that really matter.
I find this a bit self-aggrandizing (as if a great work of novel insight into the human condition were being crafted on her blog, now cut short by the Atropos of online oversharing), though I think her point is twofold:
1. Maybe by not blogging about everything, I will not seek out events/happenstances that make good blog fodder. (Luke coined a phrase for doing something just to photograph and/or blog about it:
hot-blogging: [derivation: hot-dogging] as in, What a show-off. She made that elaborate centerpiece just so she could hot-blog about it.2. There are better things to do than spend [x] amount of time in front of the computer.
The answer to Point #1 is quite complex and invokes a FacebookTwitterPinterest version of the Heisenberg principle (wherein the act of measuring has an effect on the object being measured): who is there to appreciate our cleverness, our style, our wit, if no one is watching?
Answer to Point #2: Indubitably.
I rarely read the blogs of strangers (or follow the boards of strangers on Pinterest) and I assume very few people who don't know me read my blog, mostly because it is so difficult to imagine someone being interested in the quotidian details of my life (ie, how I used the CSA Swiss chard today. Answer: braised chicken with chard and mustard). So unlike Aurajoon, I do not feel any responsibility to some hungry, unknown readership (that said, I do not have a large unknown readership). The function of This American Wife: I want my friends and family to see what I saw that day in Luckenbach (a steer with a saddle), hear Luke singing (makes me smile just thinking about it), get a glimpse of what interests me by the books I read, the movies I watch (vide infra).
****
While Hitch-22 is on my nightstand and on my mind, I must urge you to read it: truly superb. To read his writing- clear, concise, incisive, brilliant - is to realize that when it comes to language, a few people (like him) are painting the Sistine Chapel while the rest of us daub at cave drawings.
So full of literary and historical allusions - and unfamiliar vocabulary- I spent most of my time googling things to put them in context, this book has made me aware that I have much reading to do, of novels, poetry, history, biography. An absolute re-read, after I have learned a bit more about the coups and dictatorships of the last 50 years, particularly in Argentina and the Middle East. Read it, readers! Let's google together and increase our French bon mots, oui?
[One chapter of the book was published in Vanity Fair in 2007 and is available to read online:
A Death in the Family
and is also a must-read for its candor, depth of feeling, and patriotism without patronization].
Love hearing your thoughts, Julie. (I tried commenting on your previous October post back then, but blogger wouldn't let me and I gave up).
ReplyDeleteBlogging is completely a journal for me. A way to REMEMBER this time because it is so precious to me. The reality for me though, has become that the internet just plain bothers me. Not all the time, but a lot. And that's not the internet's fault...it's mine. It's how I spend my time online. Unlike you, I do regularly read blogs of strangers, so I guess that's what I get? Ha. But, actually, I'd say that reading blogs of strangers is not my problem. For example, Al and I have discussed foster parenting and no one we know does it, so I read a blog of a young person in NYC who is doing it and it's been very insightful. My real frustration might be with Facebook...that place just bothers me...and hopefully a mass deletion of "friends" will do the trick : )
Of course the absolute best part of being online is staying up to date with what your friends are doing. Especially those far away. I love hearing about your and Luke's life in Tejas, and know I wouldn't be able to get a glimpse of that w/o your taking the time to journal. So that is very special. And I appreciate that you like hearing about ours too!
I think the important thing, regardless of where you come out on the topic of "living online," is to do it consciously.