Broken Pencil Issue 26
"i gots highlights since i got bored of my hair. they turned out okay i suppose?." (ohoh_scenester).
"God damnit i am such a slacker. I have an audition on thursday night and i still havent picked my comedic monologue, why do i suck so much? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." (zoneace)
Reading random online journal entries at LiveJournal.com, I’m struck by the inflated importance of daily ephemera. Real life, whether in the form of reality television, documentaries, or blogs appears to rule our home and theatre screens. Instead of watching or reading the characters of original fictions, our society is suddenly obsessed with the foibles of real people. We’ve become our own entertainment.
What began online in the ’80s as a geek clique of BBS postings was co-opted in the ’90s through the profiteering and advertising drive of dot coms. Today blogs dominate-it’s estimated that by the end of this year there will be over 10 million of them. And while many will be written in a form of new-style subjective journalism, proffering personal opinions on media issues and politics, others will revel in mundane details about mood, music and how the day went. The four million registered users on LiveJournal.com and millions more at Blurty, Xanga, Open Diary, and DiaryLand post entries revealing their innermost thoughts, feelings and frustrations.
The pocket-sized diaries with tiny brass padlocks and images of butterflies and rainbows on the covers I wrote in as a teen, like typewriters and quill pens before them, are now museum pieces. The majority of online journalers are teenage girls, but everyone from Altzheimer’s patients documenting their memories, to bored professionals and stay-at-home moms are online every day, in confessional to a worldwide audience. What’s different about these diaries is that friends and strangers can comment on your postings. A measure of the Top Secret confidentiality of a diary, however, is preserved with anonymity and aliases. And while computer-based archiving is different from ink and paper libraries, online journalers can save their entries on their home computers to keep in perpetuity.
Pfloide, the pseudonym for an online journaler, has about 30 regular readers comprised of friends and colleagues. He’s been posting daily since 2002, and thrives on the resulting dialogues. "I like to talk with people in a medium where it’s possible to talk in paragraphs," he writes in an e-mail. "I can talk in a way I normally wouldn’t be able to, and go into my own ideas at greater length than would be polite in person."
And that’s why online journals are so popular: because they’re all about YOU. When you’re involved in the journaling community, you’re either writing about yourself, reading the posts of people on your Friends List to see if they’ve written anything about you, or having your say on issues they’re talking about.
Curiously, a Me First attitude doesn’t necessarily translate to selfishness. A friend of mine who posts daily journal entries under the name Freakykitten says that knowing other people are reading makes her entries more meaningful. "Everything I write becomes more cohesive-not just for the reader, but for myself," she notes in an e-mail. "This allows me to get better results when I’m soul-searching. It also demands that I be more honest with myself."
Through her online journal, Freakykitten has made friends from all over the world, including a confidante in Texas she’s never seen in person, but who once sent her a digital camera as a gift. Connecting with others "makes it harder for bigotry to exist, and easier for understanding and compassion to be part of everyone’s lexicon," she writes.
Telling everyone online that your pet is constipated or the fast food clerk was rude to you isn’t likely to change the world. But online journals, a digital hybrid of public and private, give people a sense that they matter. In this highly personal corner of the blogosphere, with its rant therapy and group commentary, an update on Freud’s old-fashioned Talking Cure has emerged. Call it the Typing Cure.
Next article