Personal, impersonal

BLOG.COM

How blog posts are often put into convenient little categories.

"I was surprised to see this personal post on your otherwise impersonal blog." This was the first of many comments on a post I recently wrote about a childhood experience and what I had learnt from it. Predictably, the other comments were along similar lines: some of the key phrases were "thanks for sharing" and "it must have taken such courage to write this".

Though I understood what the first commenter essentially meant "� I don't often write directly about my life on my blog, and this must have come as a surprise to him "� the use of the word "impersonal" was perplexing. That's because I've always thought of my blog as a personal one. When I write a review, or even just link to another article with commentary, it perforce says a lot about me "� about my opinions, my take on various subjects, the things that matter to me.

But then, that's the blogosphere for you. As in life, people deal in the most simplistic definitions. Write a long review and you might be praised for your skills of observation, even the quality of your writing. But no one will imagine that it might take emotional effort to write such a post "� that something in the book might have touched a very private chord in you, and that in reviewing it you might be revealing more about yourself than you'd like. Especially if you review professionally outside blogging (as I do) "� in that case it's presumed that it's part of your job anyway; all in a day's work.

But on the other hand, write something that is about your own life in the most obvious way (say, an argument with a family member), and hosannas of a very different kind start pouring in. Everyone wants to group-hug (a common malaise in the blogosphere), or at least pat you on the back.

Certain types of posts (the "personal" ones) get a lot of mileage if they are reasonably well-written and insightful about something that a lot of people feel strongly about. This means that if you're a canny blogger looking for increased traffic and a higher profile, there is scope for manipulation. There have been at least a couple of instances in recent months where bloggers were found to be dissembling about "personal experiences".

Such posts can (like the best fiction) be truthful in a more meaningful sense, regardless of whether the events they describe actually occurred. What I do find interesting is the widespread indignation when a personal post has been "exposed" as "made up". It says a lot about the self-affirmative nature of the blogosphere.

Jai Arjun Singh, aka Jabberwock, blogs at
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com