The Butt Ugly Weblog

What does a blog that has no readers look like?

Whoo, lot's of stuff happening right now. Everybody is raving over misspellings, Apple's new Powerbooks, or Verisign gone evil. (In fact, I am too, but I'm too late to even simulate saying something that has not already been said.)

Instead, I'll blog about blogging (the safe and sure choice).

There was a party on Saturday, and someone asked me if it's okay to ask about stuff that I blog, and said that reading my blog feels like peeking into my private life, as if doing something dirty or forbidden. I said "no, of course it's okay to ask since I wouldn't write it publically if I didn't want it to be read", but later on that seems like too easy an answer.

A blog isn't exactly a diary, even though the Finnish word we use "verkkopäiväkirja" or "network diary" implies it. A diary is a place where you put your thoughts for yourself; but a blog is really a two-way street. While some blogs are completely diary-like, most do encourage communication with the author in the form of comments or email - and you can always talk about other blogs in your own blog and use permalinks to refer to them. It also seems that most bloggers do like to talk about their blogs, what they have blogged, and other blogs as well. Part of it surely comes from the hype-syndrome, "'cos it's cool to talk about weblogging", but I don't think that's completely it. I never met an artist who didn't like to talk about their work, and most bloggers have a need for self-expression that borderlines on artistic will, if not quality :-).

So, in fact, blogs are really discussions, albeit discussions dominated by one person or group (and thus completely non-democratic). Blogs don't exist in a vacuum; they must have readers: "What does a blog that has no readers look like?", to paraphrase an old Zen koan. And so using the word "diary" to describe them is not quite correct, even though they can be sometimes deceptively diary-like in appearance.

(To Mindy: How about "Hei, oikeesti mä oon ihan normaali." :-)