Sunday, April 15, 2007
Blogging Angst
I was interested in Krause's discussion of “audience.” More than once, I've considered starting a blog, but I always get too scared off by audience awareness. I'd like to use a blog as a working-through of ideas that might eventually end up as something more formal, but I worry too much about who will read what I write and what they will think about me. I feel that I would have to qualify everything with a “Just thinking out loud here, but ....” Krause writes that his students as well as his colleagues lacked motivation or a “personal reason” to write in the blog in the first place. Most of my motivation to write is when I'm getting angry about things or people or ideas, and a public space is not an appropriate place for that. (Perhaps this is why so many bloggers write about their dogs.) My network includes too many people that I have to worry about impressing (and not just scholars, Boyfriend's Parents are online too). Now that I re-read that last sentence, “deixis” seems precisely the problem: I get so wrapped up in thinking about all the different meanings my words will have for different people that I become completely blocked.
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But isn't that what any writing does? While I understand (I think) Faith's premise that this hypo-blog would be informal and generally, not as thought out as formal/publishable work, I think MOST people understand that as part and parcel of the blogging.
And while, yes, there are the horror stories of what someone's posted on their Facebook not getting them hired for such and such job, I think there are certain lines that Faith probably wouldn't cross.
I could be wrong. It's happened before, but I'd still read Faith's blog, and you all would too.
I'd read Faith's blog, too.
Faith's anxiety (I don't think that's too strong a word, but maybe I'm projecting my own feelings) reflects my own. I "blog," as it were, for both this class and 8010 (thanks, Donna--just kidding), and I'm always very anxious when I post anything--and part of that comes from wanting to write something more formal, as Faith says, as opposed to just "I liked this--or I didn't like this--in so-and-so's piece" or "I think I'll use this approach in my class" or (more usually) "I understand this has its place in some circumstances, but I'm *not* going to use it, personally." But that's what a lot of blog entries end up being, it seems (not in this class, but elsewhere), and I always feel like I'm not performing what a blogger is "supposed" to perform in my entries. Like Faith, I feel the people who will be reading my posts (if any one) will be people I'm either trying to impress or, alternately, who I at least would like to engage and/or entertain. In fact, similar to Faith saying she's usually compelled to write when she gets "angry" about a person or idea, I write to persuade or to engage in a dialogue with other bloggers (just 'cause I thought that was the point of doing it for classes in the first place), but when I do write to engage someone else or an ongoing discussion, it's rarely taken up by any one.
So my limited experience with blogging leads me to believe I couldn't sustain one on my own that *any one* would read. Part of this anxiety comes, I know, from a past experience--I took Modern Drama back when it was known as English 370 and it was taught by Bob Bender, and he had us use some dinosaur of a listserv (older than Blackboard and WebCT even) to make posts and talk to one another. I was a sophomore, I think, and there was a snarky junior in the class who criticized pretty much everything I said (netiquette wasn't included in the syllabus). I ended up not participating and eventually withdrawing from the class (there's a lot more to that, but I've embarrassed myself enough already). I feel like those who read my posts (if any one) probably have the same reaction to them that she did--they're just nicer about it in that they just choose to ignore them.
I'd read Court's blog too. I think, and again, perhaps it's because I don't care as much as these two, that the blog cannot be considered a formal space, due to the general nature (of blogging/chat/listserve), which I think Krause and Brooke sort of brought up.
Clearly if you SEE it as such, and only write in formal ways, then it is, but again, perhaps only to me--this sort of communication can be as formal or informal as you make it.
I think the concept of self-presentation and persona are important when discussing web-based communication. Rhetors/authors tend to adopt a persona for themselves when they craft their messages. Every discourse implies an author that may or may not be similar to it's actual author. Perhaps even more relevent to this discussion is Black's idea of a second persona, which basically constitutes either the audience that the rhetor has imagined for her work, or the one that is implied by her rhetoric. I don't know. Edwin Black explains it better than me. His ideas are applicable to all discourse, but are particularly interesting in the context of online communication.
Black, E. (1970). The second persona. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2, 109-119.
I've blogged. Believe me, not that many people will read what you write, so the anxiety calms down real quick. Most of the anxiety, I think, is rooted in a kind of giddy egocentrism that all bloggers feel before they "publish" their first post.
The question of audience seems key to me, and Brooke, and possibly Krause, to whether a blog functions as a part of a network or a more isolated entity. I've enjoyed blogging in that funny space of blogger, where, as David mentions, few people are likely to read your blog; however, blogs like this class's are clearly meant to support networks, and give a virtual space to a network defined by the classroom.
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