The emergence of webblog is viewed by Ross Mayfield as one of the “most visible of disruptive technologies that make up the social software ecosystem.” While politicians and politically active individuals use blogs as a powerful social networking tool for change, some individuals often turn their blogs into more a “online diary,” in which they talk about their personal daily life. How shall we view this kind of blogs?
Sometimes I read this kind of blogs as personal literature. Some individuals are really great writers. It’s fun and interesting to read their descriptions or viewpoints on the world through their eyes. Through blogs, I read about a Chinese student’s “depressed view” on her “boring” student life in which she sleeps through a spoon-feeding style lecture on Marxism; I read about a French woman’s personal experience of getting lost in Israeli city; I read about a American man dealing with his fear of seeing his sister die of cancer. In some way, it forms an online history project, in which individuals tells their life stories to represent people’ life values and emotions as well as record the changes of the part of the world they are related.
At the same time, I also feel a bit uncomfortable about the “private” elements presented on the blogs. It is true that blogs provide a space for everybody to express their ideas and feelings. However, if blogging becomes more like wiring a diary, I feel like the private space of human life is squeezed under the pressure of “sharing media.” People start exhibiting their private feelings online. The sensitivity of privacy is reduced and replaced by a desire of revealing or exhibiting. Combined with the development of low-cost video making and video embedded technologies, people start blogging not just with words but also moving images, like video-logs. I don’t know whether it is fair to comment like this: I sometimes feel that they create something just “to show.” Blogs as personal diaries become something similar to the reality TV, which becomes a spontaneously created media product that feeds voyeuristic media taste. What follows is the emergence of webblog individual celebrities depending on sensation and gossip to make themselves famous.
It’s also interesting to see how fragile personal identity becomes in this sort of private blog. Creating a personal blog is like creating an identity that one chooses to represent oneself online. We often hear some suit sides news of some webblog celebrities. Blogging becomes a fictional construction and a virtual life drama that entertain audiences.
Some may say it doesn’t hurt to be entertaining…
