Sometimes, I creep Blogger blogs to see what regular bloggers are saying. Not to say that any of us (the readers of this blog, who are in majority a part of the “circle”) are irregular bloggers, but I mean people who actually blog for themselves.
I know, we all blog for ourselves. But we do so being well aware that there’s an active audience watching. Many of us track stats and I know that a few hundred people will stumble over this entry over the next few days. Some of us strive to be the top hit for a certain something on Google, so it’s clear that we want to be found, and we can’t necessarily complain if the wrong person finds us. And even some of the more confident of us occasionally doubt that what we say will be interesting to others, and somewhere in our stomachs we feel a little bit of fear that here we’ve exposed ourselves to the world, and maybe we might be boring.
The blogs I creep (creep, creep), however, don’t have any of this. They don’t receive comments, save the occasional one from a friend who’s been let in on the secret that this otherwise not-net-geeky person has something to write online, and therefore the audience isn’t specific. It isn’t targeting a certain niche, it’s more speaking to a nameless person of the writer’s own creation. Perhaps it’s even speaking to themselves.
Anyway, so I read these blogs, and I feel fascinated by them, and the way they write about whatever: what they ate that day, what they did, who they were with, relationships, the occasional deep and meaningful post or poem, without any pretense of entertaining the masses, or even anybody at all. I become attached, but I do not comment because I don’t want to ruin the candidness of expressing one’s feelings to nobody.
Sometimes I see people in the street and they remind me of the people’s lives that I read. Yesterday, I saw one that even looked like one of the people, that it took a bit not to rush up, give him a hug and exclaim “Don’t worry! We’re young! We’re all looking for love, and you’re not alone, and neither am I, because we secretly have each other!”
Of course, people are not allowed to be so candid in public.
Just because some of us want to be found doesn’t mean we care if we’re not. As I said in my entry, when I had doubts about public interest I just blogged privately. For me, the important thing is just getting it down somewhere.
I know what you mean about not commenting though. I often do this on blogs like ours though.. I feel I’m interrupting if I don’t know the blogger well
I think my old blogger’s out there somewhere. But actually, even then I remember posting about my opinions on things, rather than just daily life. Hum.
I actually love blogging even though no one would comment. I gave up trying to get comments & being all needy, because I realized that if it’s what i love to do, then i will do it. People would ask me why do i blog & no one would comment. I say, “hello, not everyone cares who views & comments”. I am not gonna deny that I used to care alot about my comments & visits, but not anymore. I love blogging even if it means to myself. Take a look at my old blogspot, “http://tlasr.blogspot.com” it’s actually pretty neat…even with no comments. LOL & I defiantly knew that no one would comment me because I had a blogspot, but then my boyfriend wanted me to get a domain, plus a domain suits me better so i got it. & just by twitter automated post, I actually had comments. LOL. Maybe you can share the blogs that you read? I would love to read them aswell.
I never really cared about the amount of comments I received on a particular blog post. However, when one of my post got more than 20, I’d get all giddy and excited inside. When people comment my posts, I somewhat feel obligated to comment back so that I don’t look like an unapreciative twit. I try my hardest not to care, but my website is the most important thing to me atm and I don’t want people thinking I’m a bad web owner because I don’t reply back. But at the same time, I don’t want to comment on a blog when I don’t have anything of value to say.
I don’t know if I’m one of these people – and by that, I mean me writing in that way, not you reading my blog – but I get what you’re saying. Candidness is a very refreshing perspective on life than what most bloggers blog about. A lot of us – including myself – blog for the sake of blogging, knowing we have an audience (I don’t think I actually have one, but just in case!), whereas these people don’t know, or don’t care. Breath of fresh air!
I know so much what you mean. I started off my blog with disabling comments and writing whatever I wanted, and it happened to always be about me.
Obviously, I don’t write for just an audience now, but I did enable comments and start addressing an audience.
Hm, I just considered getting a Blogger blog just to keep things quiet, but I like socializing. It is hard to get back to my former style of writing knowing someone could comment on it, though.
That’s cute that you want to hug and comfort people in public :P
I’m actually just starting to try to get out of that. I like blogging about myself, and about things I care about, but there have been lots of times where I won’t publish a post, or where I’ll alter the post almost beyond recognition, because I want it to be interesting to others. Recently I’ve been realising that I want to have my blog forever, so I can look back on it and see who I was in 2010 – and you know what? I still get just as many comments as I ever did. :P
I recently disabled comments on my blog. I cared too much about it and it made me try and change the way I blogged, so I just came across even more awkward than usual :P I like to blog for myself, even if I’m paying for my own domain and website. There are times I don’t publish something and instead put it friends-only on livejournal but I’ve long given up trying to sound intelligent or write about more interesting, generalised topics. It takes away the fun (for me).
That’s quite funny, for a second I completely thought “oh no, I’M one of those bloggers she’s talking about”… then I realised I can’t remember if I ever did comment here or not and I don’t use Blogger. It seems that a lot of us out there than I thought that are ‘those’ type of bloggers though.
Let it be known that it works the other way around, only much more intensely. While you may feel you’re interrupting our personal space – which you’re not at all, at least not in my context – a lot of the time I feel intimidated to comment on popular blogs because the blogger must be busy (therefore I’M interrupting them); they may not care what I have to say; I’m not in that blogger’s web-circle; I don’t feel my blogging style is compatible or interesting at all to the blogger… and so on.
If you do find someone’s entry just about their day and life that fascinating, please think about leaving a comment, it might really make someone’s day
I think It’s important that we “track” and document our goals, dreams, ambitions and our struggles. I think It’s important to write to our (future)selves may it be blogging, scrap booking or writing in a journal.
I’ve stumbled over random note books with painful thoughts and memories of mine several times. And I wasn’t surprised that i had forgotten all about the book and what I had written in it. It was meant to be buried and then found again when I was ready.
To be honest, unless the writing style is interesting, those blogs don’t hold my attention for very long… :|
I don’t think the authors are *really* addressing nobody because there’s a reason it’s online. They know someone, somehow, will stumble across their thoughts.
I went through my old blog archives a few months ago from like, 2006 and there was a definite difference in how I wrote my entries. I had no audience back then, at least not really, and my entries were a lot less “polished” and very much more stream of consciousness-type thing. They were a lot less guarded about my privacy too, cause I won’t blog about my friends and family so candidly anymore. Now, I don’t ever blog about my day the way I used to (“In English class I had to write an essay on Hamlet and in Chemistry we had a quiz…”)