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Recently, Maria Niles wrote an article called Strip Blogging: How Naked Do You Get? which caught my interest and has given me pause. I've been thinking about this topic quite a bit since I first read her piece.
I've been blogging for about 5 years, and in that time, I've also been reading many other blogs. I tend toward the blogs that make me laugh - funny anecdotes about life and such. I've enjoyed Dooce and Amalah and others like those. I am not only entertained by these bloggers, I gain a connection to them - I find peace (and humor) at life's trials and tribulations, as seen through the eyes of others, knowing that I'm not alone in my own silly worries and fears and challenges. I hope that the visitors to my own blog feel the same way.
I have noticed over the years, though, that some bloggers who started out making me roll with laughter seem to have lost some of their edge over the years. (And no, I'm not going to name names. I'm a wimpy wimpy girl who would never want someone to know I thought that about her.) I wonder if I will, too, lose mine. Not that I'm terribly edgy to begin with - perhaps I'm about as edgy as a volleyball. In other words, not edgy at all. Hopefully I make up for my lack of edginess in other ways, by being ridiculously, embarrassingly goofy. Hey! Goofy is the new edgy. I read it in on Twitter - it must be true!
So anyway.
I have a theory about this loss of edginess, and it ties into Maria's piece about strip blogging and getting naked in one's writing. Can I share it with you? I'd love to get some dialogue going. Am I all wet on this? Does anyone else find my theory to be accurate? Inaccurate? (Or edgy? Or goofy?) Perhaps first I should share the theory and then ask the questions, huh?
Here it is then: the longer one blogs, the larger one's following becomes, the more exposed and vulnerable the person is and, in turn, the less they are willing to expose and share. Perhaps they used to blog far out on the edge, but once they become vulnerable, they move to more safe territory. This, then, is the reason they seem to lose their edge.
There is no blame in this observation; only empathy and understanding.
I, myself, am a hobbyist where blogging is concerned. I have a pretty meager following and have not reached any critical mass of exposure. However, even in this modest situation, I feel a little taste of what these more successful bloggers must feel. I feel my worlds converging.
Back in the day, it was pretty easy to compartmentalize my world. There was my real life, which included family and work people. There were my message board people, and then there were my blog people. In my online life, I use just my first name or my 'JustLinda' pseudonym.
I blogged with impunity. I tried to bring humor to many of life's situations.
However, in the past couple years, this convergence has begun. Facebook is part of that - with the full emergence of Facebook by people who traditionally weren't engaged online, there are many more people who know my online persona. My family members, my friends from years gone by, even some of my coworkers connect to me via Facebook.
Add to that the fact that somehow, via Google algorithm voodoo, a search for my full name connects someone to my blog. In other words, anyone who knows me in real life and Googles my first and last name now will see my blog link as the first item in the search results. Suddenly, my blog isn't anonymous.
Don't get me wrong - I don't blog to ridicule people, to be mean or snarky. My blog is not that kind of place. However, I do try to put my own humorous spin on life's experiences, and even this has the potential to cause some hurt that I may not ever intend to cause.
As an example, I wrote a post years ago about our extended family vacation and how my parents were deliberating about whether we should bring ham with us or buy it in Florida. It was very must a Linda-post, my way of perceiving the whole ham situation, chuckling over life. However, such an article, while entertaining to a few of us, was somewhat hurtful to
