Sometimes reading blogs is like reading a bunch of those braggy Christmas letters. Everyday. But not all of them are unrealistic. Some of them are self-deprecating, some “awesome” (a scientific term my husband and I use regularly to describe someone who tries so hard that it’s difficult to look away, and all you want to do is put your arm around that person and say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. Calm down. We LIKE you!”), and some just matter-of-fact. But they all have an undeniable element to them. They invite readers.
When you invite someone over to read what you’re writing, you’re thinking of how to hook them. Writers, after all, do that. Public speakers, too. These artistic mediums tell you to “know your audience” and then the product will follow. So, blogging is no different, really. Only sometimes I think we fool ourselves into thinking that it IS different. That this is just a way to document our lives, you know, for our posterity (a noble pursuit), or to stay in touch with friends (nice, selfless of us to preserve friendships like that, isn’t it?), when if we really acknowledge that we have a motive to make money, or start a business, or create a readership to sell something (books, how-to’s, etc), or create a celebrity persona (gasp!), we would be embarrassed or feel we need to justify it in another way. No one acknowledges the growing trend to sell yourself in blogging. No one likes to show up to a “party” only to find that instead of eating and catching up with friends, you have to sit through an hour-long presentation that smells, walks, and quacks like a pyramid (you know the ones). Blogging, like Kacy once told me, is the new tupperware party. The new Avon.
I think blogs are more like an advertisement for your life. They’re big, glossy pictures they’re selling you something. It’s the new glossy magazine spread, the new crazy billboard, the breakthrough tv commercial. With more and more methods of getting to us, we’ve become so comfortable with advertisements around us, that we’ve become one. We don’t even need to be asked–we just morph into what has always been there.
It’s not enough to decorate your house–you have to show everyone and give tutorials because you just know they’re dying to do it, too. It’s not enough to make a good meal, you’re sure everyone will want the recipe–so you’ll include the step by step process in pictures and description. It’s not enough to clean out your cupboards, you have to tell everyone else how to clean it too (ouch. that one hurt. I hate it when I’m a hypocrite.) It’s not that it’s materialistic, either. There are blogs that tell you when they go to the temple, how much food storage they have and how you can collect it, too, or how they’re studying the scriptures. It’s not that these tutorials are bad. I have used lots of ideas I’ve found on blogs. I’ve used recipes, decorating tips, places to get a bargain, etc. I’ve used it as a tool to better my life. It’s great. My point is, do we acknowledge our motives for both posting and reading/using blogs?
Do you ever read blogs and think, “What are they selling me?” or “What is their agenda for showing me this?” or “How does this blog make me feel?”
Blogs can have giveaways, or they can be upfront and say, “Hey, I got this for free and I really like it–maybe you will, too” and have ad space on the sidebar and if you click on it, they get some sort of compensation or whatever. I’m not really talking about that aspect. If a lot of people read your blog and you want to make money off of it, I say that’s great. I have no problem with that. I’m talking about advertising your life in a way that creates an image of how you are and not owning up to that. Or the audience not acknowledging that it is not a full picture of that blogger’s life. A blog is not a complete autobiography. It is a choice and a small sliver in one aspect of a person’s life. It’s not the whole story. Even if they blog everyday. Even if they include positive and negative aspects of their lives. It’s still a filtered perspective: her (the blogger’s) filter of what happened (real or imagined), the presentation of that experience (what she decides to report and in what way), you (the reader’s) perspective when reading it, and so on.
When I read some blogs, I feel like I don’t have enough, literally, and that I’m not doing enough. Other blogs make me laugh, others inspire me to write more. One blog literally changed my life for the better in ways I won’t share here (example of my blogging persona: I’m trying to be mysterious because in real life I’m not, and so here it is). Others make me really mad. It’s interesting that, in thinking of what the difference is among these different blogs, I can’t really put my finger on the major differences. Intent, surely, has something to do with it. I’m not fully sure. I just think that there are more differences than labeling blogs like “cooking blog,” “mommy blog,” “design blog,” etc. There are better methods to determine intent and authenticity.
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