Online journals, daily personal updates, “recently” columns: call them what you will, weblogs (or “blogs” for short) are everywhere. In fact, they appear much more commonly than webcams, although the video insights into remote places get greater cultural exposure. But why does everyone and their mother have a blog, and what does this mean for the Internet community?
The point of a standard, written diary is to express your hidden thoughts in such a manner that they will remain accessible only to you. But really, isn’t part of the thrill of keeping a diary the dreadful thought that someone else might read it? When someone posts their thoughts of the day up on the web for everyone to see, it creates something like an anti-diary. The dread and subliminal excitement comes from the possibility that no one has taken the time to read your thoughts and secret desires. Some of these blogs out there gets tens or hundreds or even thousands of page views a day, and some of them get no traffic at all… how does one explain this phenomenon? Is it implicitly due to the skills of the writer or of the level of adventure in their experiences? Certainly, personal homepages with webcams get more views on their blogs. And I’m sure it helps with the male demographic if the page belongs to an attractive girl.
But how much could that help really? Browsing habit statistics show that women are more likely to read a blog than men. They are also more likely to keep one. Perhaps the greatest factors in blog traffic, then, are the links pages on popular homepages, pointing the reader to other blogs across the Internet. This would mean that your blog and website popularity depends on how many other popular websites like yours. One might imagine cliques of diaries forming on the web, linking and re-linking back and forth to each other, and this is actually the case. But with all of these people reading and writing their personal stories out in HTML, to share with their cliques and strangers alike, it still doesn’t answer why someone would publicize their personal feelings at all.
I recently started a blog to try and find out the cause behind it. I find myself writing about my activities of the day, as I’ve seen done in other ones, occasionally delving into personal opinions and such. I try to think why anyone would read it though. I read a few of my high school friends on a regular basis, along with some others, and I tried to think of why I might care. Certainly, it’s not important what so-and-so, who I haven’t seen in three years, thought about the Harry Potter movie. But yet, we read them anyway. Is there something there, in between the lines of a blog, that hooks on to the reader? Going out to the movies, reading a new book, etc are all such unremarkable activities, and still they are read, potentially by thousands of people who don’t even know the person writing. While this may sound fanciful, it is going on, right now, online.
Perhaps, knowing that your long-lost friend is doing normal activities is comforting, since it lets you know that they’re all right. But how does this apply to people we don’t know? My theory is that this is how the Jerry Springer/reality TV/People Magazine effect has made it onto the Internet. People have an obsession with other peoples lives. Many of us travel moment to moment on gossip, like addicts. And what better way to hear it, than straight from the person it’s happening to. But why do they write? This could be the same reason contestants clamor to appear on Springer, grabbing any chance for media exposure that they can. Perhaps this is where the less visually-oriented of us push for publicity, offering up our souls and inner needs for page traffic. Is it really so different than the overflowing applications coming in from prospective Survivor participants?