die bühne
people generally place themselves at the center and order the world around themselves according to their attitudes and opinions. reality television takes advantage of this psychological tendency. the producers know that involving their audience emotionally is the key to success. you cannot help but form opinions about people and assessments of their worth when you observe their actions.
and so it is with this blog. i would be willing to bet almost everyone has decided, on some level, whether they think someone sounds cool or stupid based on what they read posted in their blog. this leaves me to wonder what attitudes are being formed towards me as someone reads this sentence. maybe i sound like i'm trying to sound smart.
everyone is encumbered by their own set of delusions and neuroses, and my experience with the internet has lead me to believe that these become more apparent when someone is given a forum in which to freely voice their thoughts. so i guess the nice thing about these web journals is that the comment feature allows the audience to verbalize their judgment. if someone sounds like they're full of themselves, the reader has the opportunity to tell them so. i think some people even like knowing that they're being judged. positive feedback makes them feel warm and fuzzy and most people have enough self-assurance and/or indignance to prevent most negative feedback from doing much damage.
posted by ged @ 10:55 PM
8 Comments:
OK, you hooked me! My blogfriend Jade (http://www.azjade.com/public_html/blog/sunburns.htm) was ranting about this topic on her site today. You should take a look.
We all make judgements when we are reading blogs, but most of the time it's not a judgement regarding the character of the writer, rather it is a judgement as to whether the content of the blog is worth one's time and effort to read. There are exceptions, of course, where a blogger's character is judged, such as when a blogger seems like he/she is racist, homophobic, etc.
In my own blog, I've been called out once for being judgemental. I'm glad that the reader spoke up and made me examine my ideas.
You are right, we all like to have some validation. Well, here's a little for you. I don't know what your blog will contain, but I'm intrigued.
I don't think you're full-of-it at all! ;-) You've tapped on an interesting question here. As soon as you start writing with *audience* in mind, you become more self-aware: what will people think of *me*? In most writing classes, students fixate on what the *teacher* will think, but with blogging, you have a larger audience. So in a sense, this sort of writing is closer to what actual professional writers do: they write with a "real" audience in mind.
Very nice entry. It was thought provoking, and I tend to enjoy blogs that make me respond, "Hmm".
I agree with Shadow Angel that most readers of blogs, myself included, tend to "judge" what a person has written versus the character of the writer. On the other hand, after reading a blog for a long time, sometimes the reader does get some sense of what the writer is like beyond the individual posts that are made.
I've pondered a similar question (if I'm understanding your point correctly): is my blogging yet one more way to "place myself at the center and order of the world". I wonder if I'm too narcissistic and if blogging is another way to be "self-centered".
Metablogging is, of course, one of the blogger's favourite topics.
You bring up questions that bloggers love to muse on because audience can, among other things, become an obsession, a source of validation (as you say), or a unbearable burden, and the disputes in commentboxes and over links can get brutal. However, my experience suggests that a large portion of the bloggers out there are far more sensitive than one might expect, and far less open to dissent than one might hope.
This is not, I point out emphatically, the case with Dr. Schaub, who is one of the most *gleefully* open-to-dissent bloggers I've encountered.
sometimes that is true, that people judge the writing and not the writer. maybe such people are more pure of heart than myself and most people i've known. what i've observed leads me to believe that a lot of us mortals are quite nasty, judgemental creatures. it's a subconcious thing, most likely, but whenever anyone says (or in this case, writes) anything personal, people seem to rather freely pass judgement on the writer. the judgement usually isn't anything too serious, but nonetheless contributes to the overall opinion of the writer. i would compare this to a phenomenon whereby an observer of a car accident typically views the accident as the fault of the driver, whereas the driver typically views it as a result of circumstance. it's all a larger product of the human mind's tendency to enhance its own comfort and reduce cognitive dissonance.
"metablogging".. i like that. i'm new at this, so i am not entirely sure if there's a better way to respond to specific posts. until i figure it out or someone tells me, i'll just keep posting my replies as additional comments like this.
i'm assuming based on your comment that you've had classes with schaub before. any scandalous secrets about her that i can use to blackmail a good grade out of her? j/k. it's nice to know there are other dissent-o-philes out there.
right on, at first when i saw the title of your blog i thought it was a student who was being a troublemaker or a rebel you know, acting like they don't care about this assignment/project/whatever. but you obviously have something to say, so it leads me to think if you used the title for a hook to bring people in or what. whatever, it doesn't matter. i think both the writer and the writing both need to be judged at the same time. sorry can't say more, in class now and we need to do something now.
Hmmm, N says I'm gleefully open to dissent...I'm not sure I agree with that. Wanna fight it out, N? ;-)
And no, N's never been in one of my classes, but he has read my blog for a good long while. So maybe he still is a good source for blackmail fodder, or not?
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