On Blogging: Pitfalls and Piety

It's been a while since I blogged. Last time I blogged was, well, different, to say the least. It was under a pseudonym, and I told no one about it. Though I changed certain details to maintain my anonymity, it was nonfiction-- as candid, as honest, as true to me, as I'd ever been.  The anonymity was liberating.  And it had a lot of followers... because it was entertaining, because it was honest.

Then some people found it, somehow...

Actually, I had another blog after that... It was initially intended to be a sort of promotion for my film Chloe, wherein I was to write as the character, but, because the timing didn't work out, it sort of devolved into a regular personal rant-blog, and then a highly codified series of puzzles... Anyway.  This will be different.  I don't have any kind of cloak of anonymity; I have my name on it.  And if I've learned anything, I've learned about lurkers.

I've learned that I don't like lurking, neither to lurk nor to be the object of lurking.  I've learned about the two types of lurkers-- the distant/curious, and the close/paranoid.  The former group tend to be folks you don't really know-- either people you used to know but fell out of touch with, or people you've never met at all; these are folks looking for information.  The latter group is a paradox.  These are people you know well, even extremely well, and are in fairly regular contact with; these are folks with an agenda.  Now simply reading someone's blog out of interest, whether you've never met at all, or share a bed, is not lurking.  Being interested in the blogger's life or enjoying their writing is a wonderful thing.  So what exactly separates the wheat from the chaff?  What makes a lurker?

As defined here on this blog-- a lurker is someone who uses a blog, or a personal website, or Facebook (Facebook is comprised almost entirely of lurkers), etc, somewhat compulsively, to find "dirt" or "evidence" of perceived slights or conflicts, on the object of the lurker's fixation.  This is the real difference.  It's mostly bad news with a lurker.

So there's nothin' here for lurkers.  I imagine this will consist of a lot of boring, tedious hogwash (see above) to keep me busy and feeling understood during periods of artistic and social (read: figurative and literal) isolation.

It's a drag, being an agoraphobic exhibitionist.  I am a private person, plagued by the need to express, to the faceless masses, to feel connected, and, at the same time, extremely irritated by breaches of privacy... The truth is, most likely, nobody gives a goddamn.  HAH.

But this is necessary for my sanity right now.  I'm artistically sort of stuck-- waiting for production/post-production, etc.  And I'm socially sort of bizarre.  That's not new.  But it's different.  Anyway.

What a terrible first round of drivel.

Godspeed.