The rhetoric of "don't kid yourself"

When I started this blog, I did it "uncover." Yes, I, the mysterious NILE, do hereby ascribe unto the blogdom my great and uncensored thoughts on...well, on the blogdom. Not too sexy, but hey.

I wanted to see how it felt to be totally detached from my true self (tall 40-year-old teaching, married, attorney, grad student, mother-of-two self). Hence the no-name blog. I quickly found, however, that my class knows who I am, and since that's about all (mostly) who read this thing, I censor my writing because, ya know, I don't want you guys to think I'm a freak or anything. So the rhetoric of my blog is "I'm trying to be smart, mildly amusing, and not too freaky."

I bet a gazillion dollars I'm not alone in the quickly-evolving sense that there's not really much hiding on blogs. Not matter what, people can generally talk back to you. It's a Harry Potteresque kind of thing. You start writing and suddenly the page starts complaining about your writing. Invariably you're going to respond. And the other thing is, even if you try to be a mere anonymous commenter, most blogs have a log-type thingie (the technical term) that allows the author to see the visitors and even know something about their computer screen. Very Orwellian. (see, smart, mildly amusing, not too freaky).

So "even as we celebrate the freedom of the blogdom, we destroy it" -- right, Colin?

Witness the shock and occasional ire when we discuss other blogs. It's like they're pissed that we have the audacity to comment on their personal thoughts. But get real-- why use the internet when you can write in a diary, if you truly want private expression. The real truth is that we ALL want our blogs to be read, for some kind of perfectly understandable human validation of our true selves (there's the humanities instructor in me rearing her ugly head).

Even sites like Dooce, which don't allow comments, are at least conscious that others may read them. Even if we take the most devil may care attitude about what we write in a blog, we are doing that with the very idea that someone may care, but f**k 'em (see, I'm a teacher, so no bad words in my blog...but if you need me to explain, I removed the "U" and the "C" and then put in....) In fact, the no-comment blogs may be the most paranoid because they DON'T know how the world is reacting to their posts. It's a one-way mirror -- we see you, but you don't see us. And how uncomfortable is that??