Why do we blog?

It has been brought to my attention by two (one and two) recent entries of two equally fabulous individuals who inhabit my cybernetic and real life that the reason why we blog has not been entirely clarified to the public. Hence I shall attempt to answer the all-too-frequent question: why do we blog, and open up our lives and thoughts to random strangers? Why, given that we never wanted anybody to read our teenagers' diaries, and least of all to get a glimpse into what was going on in our brains? Why, given we spent so much time choosing with meticulous care our friends, and avoiding unnecessary contact with the rest of the people, who inhabit this world and all too often seem only capable of daily arrogance and stupidity? Why indeed, when we could read a book instead, watch a good movie, get out of the house and stop staring at a computer screen which is making us blind?

There is no straight answer to this question, and clearly each person blogs for different reasons, just like each person wears clothes for different purposes. But apart from commercial blogs and those with clearly stated purposes, most of which are to me completely alien (e.g. they highlight the benefits of self-raising flour or discuss the ultimate garden-trimming gadget: people, get a life!!!), I tend to divide bloggers into 3 broad categories, responding to 3 equally broad reasons for bloggging: the Recording bloggers, the Performing bloggers and the Secret bloggers.

The first category has an accounting purpose, just like when we need to write down numbers to remember them. Although it appears to be the natural development of traditional mail, and even bears huge resemblance to Victorian correspondence in style and appearance, it's often as self-referential as it comes. Whether they like keeping their friends informed during their travels across South East Asia, or keeping grandma up-to-date on their pet/child's latest fart, what they are actually doing is recording their lives so they can then remember it when they are old and ravaged by Parkinson's disease. As they are for the most part talking to their old selves in the future, rather than to other people in the present, these bloggers are generally the dullest ones you might come across. And yet, I love them to bits, they fascinate me and mesmerize me, the way kaleidoscopes do. Through them, we get a glimpse at those individuals we hear so much about, but have never really encountered in the flesh, and which allegedly make up the majority of the world: the suburban armies of living-dead that are besieging us.

Then there is the second category, the Performing bloggers, made up of those who have finally found a way to communicate and express what they have inside: blogging for them is a beautiful stage, enhanced by the fact that only their minds and writing skills have to be on display. The pressures of the physical world can be cast aside. Here they are all equal: no one is too fat, too tall, too rich, too ugly, too short, too ginger, too bald, too hairy, too poor or too bony to blog. The only thing that matters is the connection speed. This gives an exceptional freedom to many, who would be usually sitting at the back of the classroom, too shy to speak their minds and raise their voices. Blogging is the revenge of the nerds, it's a beautiful democracy of units - one blog, one vote. It's not about searching, it's about finally having an opportunity to speak out, without having to worry about people liking them, listening to them, judging them. From my perspective (the reader, but also the blogger), accustomed as I am to professional performers - on paper as on stage/screen - who talk, write, move, even look alike, I am craving the diversity and honesty offered by many blogs. Here I am not forced to listen to what some marketing idiot thinks I should like. I am making my decisions, finding with my brain, eyes and a little luck what makes me laugh, cry, giggle, gasp.

For a few of us, blogging is a message in a bottle. These are what I call the Secret bloggers. They don't write for themselves, like the Recording bloggers, nor for the public - at times made up of friends, at times of strangers - like the Performing bloggers. They write for that stranger who might pick up that bottle. I remember the first time I came across one of these bloggers. It was late at night, like now. I was flicking through Blogger lazily reading entries, when I came across a blog by an Italian girl. Her English was ok, but she clearly struggled, and I wondered why she’d choose to use a language which wasn’t her first one. There were not many entries, maybe 4 or 5, so I went through all of them. I discovered that she had returned to Italy after a time living in the US, a time which must have been the happiest in her life, judging by the picture in her profile, where she sat in a diner hugging a handsome blond man. He had the look of an American college boy. She had the look of an Italian girl abroad. There was so much sadness in that blog, so many regrets, so much failure. The emotional pain she felt was almost contagious. Even the use of the English language was her attempt to drag herself out of the ditch in which she had fallen. She hated herself, what she had allowed herself to become, physically and mentally, yet she strived to find a way out, to feel the way she did when she sat at that diner with that American boy. I dropped her a note, said something ludicrously clichéd about overcoming difficulties, never got a reply.

So why do we blog? Well, I can't speak for the Community, least of all for the world wide web, but in truth, I probably blog for a mixture of the three above reasons, in different quantities which change by the day. I like to think I am mostly a Performer for my friends, in the (perhaps vain) hope they might understand me better. It certainly worked the other way round, and I got a few glimpses of friends' personality traits which never knew were there. Such as this one. Ugly... I do however perform for a wider audience too, which is why I try to avoid too many inside jokes and personal references. On the other hand, I unfortunately do find myself recording events, pictures, adventures, facts, phrases... I know one day I'll read them on my hospital bed and scream "OHMYGOD! Did I really do THAT!?!?" before grabbing another life-saving pill. Sad, but true. However, deep inside, I treat each posting like a little message in a bottle, which might get picked up across the world by someone who will become a new friend. This has happened already once, so why not again? Because, really, you can never have enough good friends...