Second thoughts

I keep thinking about last Thursday's class and our visit from Ms. T. First of all, very cool that she came, and she was very smart and articulate. Thank God she fit the image of the "superblogger" -- literate, irreverent, well-spoken, and frankly, much hipper than me. I for one was grateful that she could wear a scarf with such panache. Wait, wait, wait, I am not making fun, I'm serious! Weren't we all happy that she is what we sort of pictured her to be? What if our friend with the great blog had turned out to be inarticulate, unpleasant, or rude? I sensed some kind of giddy relief that cool blog=cool blogger.

Okay, maybe I'm overthinking this. But I keep coming back to the bizarre and uniquely blog-based experience of reading someone's intimate thoughts on a regular basis without any context for who that person is. I asked Ms. T. why she blogged, but now I ask myself, why do I read? If we read sites like Dooce, Coffee Rhetoric, or even the one by Sally, it seems we are searching for human connection, savoring those details of others' lives that we often miss in our bedroom communities and our over-developed American sense of personal space and privacy. (I'm not against privacy; I just think it wouldn't hurt if we showed a little more interest in the details of the lives of the people around us). So when we feel a connection, we hope it's real. We don't want to get duped; that makes us wary and mistrustful. So when our impressions are validated, it feels good. Ms. T. seemed like someone we wanted to talk to -- and she was! Phew! How would we have felt about her blog if she had turned out to be an sixteen-year-old high school boy? Would we still read it? (No.) Would we feel betrayed? (Yes.) Why? Again, the elusive search for authenticity. The ethic of the blogdom is TRUTH...a blog is not supposed to be a novel or fictious (unless it's clearly billed as such, like Brett's book in progress). So say whatever you want on your blog -- but you better mean it. It better be real. Or we're really gonna be pissed off. Don't try to Wonk me.