Lynn Daisy Moi at Bacon Cheese and Oatcakes talks about having more contact with people in Blogland than in real-life, partly due to her hearing impediment. she talks about the dilemma of how much information it is safe to give out on line.
Many people have stated how the persona they present on their blog, while being largely true, is only part of their real selves. I think I may have written about this here already.
I often think of Blogging as a bit like going to the pub. There's always one sad tosser going on about the world, moan moan moan. Well, that's me :)
Seriously, I found it interesting that my post titled Blog Roll received so many comments. A cynic may say that it's because we, as bloggers, are collectively self-absorbed, and using any excuse to talk about blogging just shows us to be intellectual light weights. Or maybe it's just like being in a pub and talking about alcohol. It makes sense.
Sure, we could talk about and blog about the big ideas, about philosophy and theology and astronomy, but really, who does? I would imagine that 90% of conversation is mundane.
Of course, the third explanation may be that the high number of comments came from a desire to demonstrate distaste for the mocking tone of the second comment. Which demonstrates another interesting characteristic of the blog world - the genuine niceness of people. Maybe it's an escape from the outside world where many of us do battle with the small inconsiderations of strangers and the big ones of colleagues and businesses. In the blogosphere there are very few ad hominem attacks.
Moi says "here may not really be as safe as real-life so I have to curb my typing fingers for fear that I might give too much away". Perhaps it's no bad thing that we have to curb our typing fingers. At least we have that choice - some people give away very little personal information. In other aspects of their life they may have to talk about personal problems or weaknesses they feel uncomfortable about.
Some people don't reveal their real name at all. I've just done a search on one such person and found the name with which they registered their domain, which is quite different from their blog name. I could spend the evening finding the home addresses, surnames etc of loads of people. If I could be bothered, what would I then do with the information? If I did decide to 'stalk' one of those people, it wouldn't be because of blogging - surely it would be easier to stalk someone who lives near me or whatever...
