To Blog Or Not To Blog or Why Am I Here?

In recent years I have grown contentedly accustomed to my surreptitious lifestyle. Where some would scoff at the notion of finding an immense enjoyment in coming home to oneself and oneself alone, I have embraced it and, in doing so, my self imposed solitude has become one of my defining character traits. I certainly wouldn’t classify myself as a hermit, one of those curmudgeonly old men, arms crossed, scowling at the world (although I do admit the idea of vanishing, Salinger like, into some secluded log cabin sanctuary is a reoccurring fantasy). I just tend to remain private and seldom reveal much of myself. I prefer to leave little breadcrumbs here and there as opposed to an entire loaf. To me, there are many comforts in concealment. With that said, one shouldn’t be surprised that the entire phenomenon of blogging really doesn’t appeal to me.

I have been an active driver of the Information Super Highway for many years. Being the type to keep to myself, discovering the Internet one morning in college was like seeing the Grail. Here was a thriving community of invisibles. Who were these people and, more so, who cared? I couldn't see them. They couldn't see me. It was a vast ocean out there and I walked blindly into the surf smiling. Those were very different times. I can recall the days before popups and unders and invasive advertising. I was around before graphics were prominent and text was the main foundation of a webpage. There was no Napster, no MP3s, no Google and one could venture into a chat room and actually carry on an intelligent conversation without being subjected to questions regarding your age, sex and location. There was still plenty of porn, though. Puh-len-tee! But, back then, it somehow felt like your porn and not porn for the masses.

Yes, these days were the prime of the online computer nerd. We were truly the kings of kings. We made webpages by the dozens for no particular reason except to showcase our HTML abilities. We were the first Hotmail users. We used WebCrawler and HotBot to search for photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar. We developed and nurtured forums in their infancy and coined the terms “flame war”, "newbie" and "emoticon". All the base were belong to us! Then came the popularity of the Internet, the lowering of home computer prices and soon the highway became a multi-lane bypass and everybody and their pet dog Bucky had access. The floodgates were open and things would never quite be the same again.

Back then I was a deluge of personal information online. Yes, I had the ability to become anyone I so wished cloaked behind a motherboard and monitor but, instead, I found myself being, well, myself. I was more open and direct then I was in the real world, verbose to the point of over emphasizing (this trait, you can see, has not left me) and a proverbial open book to anybody who wanted to take me down from the dusty shelf. This would be a double edged sword. I became more withdrawn offline and more drawn in online. In recent years I have become more introverted online, a lurker if you will, and the glitter and paint has faded somewhat. My offline life, however, has not altered. My daily endeavors have not become more public ones. I'm still withdrawn. Both worlds now gel. All is level.

So came the time to decide whether or not to enter into the world of online publicity, strip myself down naked and freezing and display my dreams, desires, successes and failures, for good or ill, to anybody who happened to wander by to read them. To blog or not to blog, that is the question. Man, I don’t even like the word blog. Why blog? What do we need the B in there for? Why not just a log? Are we afraid of mass confusion between online accounts of ones life and something you might trip over while hiking? (A quick question to a blogging acquaintance informs me that the B means Web. Allow me a moment to pause and rip out three of my nipple hairs. Ah, that satisfied the angst. Have we denigrated so far downward on the human laziness spiral that typing two extra letters has become too unbearable? Maybe I am that angry old man.)

Though it is off topic, the tendency to abbreviate, make into acronyms and condense the English language into an alternate online dialect has been the bane of my online conversations. The younger the people I talk to, the more bastardizing of the language. Any form of basic sentence structure and punctuation generally becomes a garbled, diluted mess of language slaughtering. It's like Picassos synthetic cubism period with letters. You tilt and crane and scrutinize and step back and still you scratch and wonder: What the hell am I looking at? We are alienating English. Trying to converse with these people is like trying to decipher complex military code! So, allow me to shake my firmly clenched fist at the online world and declare in a booming voice that will resound with fury echoing off webpages the world over: "THIS IS NOT A BLOG! THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS AN ONLINE JOURNAL. I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GONNA' TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

Okay, I have exorcised the anger and can continue on with my origina—no, wait, not yet. One more nipple hair. Ah, yes, splendid. Onward, shall we?

So, yes, with my dislike of peeling back my layers for people in person, deviating to online autobiographical accounts of my day in and day outs was not appealing. Then the thought occurred of emails, dozens of them over the course of a year. The scene in Miracle On 34th street plays out now (Hey, sue me! Such analogies are forgiven this time of year. Stop gripping, Ralphie. You’ll shoot your eye out!). Sacks and sacks of letters overflowing but then they transform into keyboards and vowel keystrokes and consonant typing. Fingers cramp and carpal tunnel syndrome descends upon my hands twisting them into twin claws. The poor Japanese children will not be able to concentrate on lessons, gapping in silent horror at my atrocious mutations. Eyes will widen on the trains. People will point and mock in a language I cannot understand. I will become known as the Mad English Hookman and tales of my wanderings will spark fear as midnight clocks chime. Actually, that sounds pretty cool! Anyway, the idea of writing individual emails and letters to the fine folk back home to update on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis was not an alluring thought to my fingertips (my fingertips think, don’t yours?). A place such as this will alleviate the redundancy.

The choosing of Blogspot (henceforth known as OnlineJournalSpot) over the sickeningly more fashionable MySpace was a simple one. A mosey on over to MySpace land became an all out assault on my faith in humanity and an unearthing of all things I loath about these modern days of the Internet. The Highway I once drove down, so smooth and free, is now rotted with cavity potholes and dead skunks. It’s like somebody ate a few Dali paintings, mixed in some of those tacky Magic Eye calendars and regurgitated them into some grotesque vision of a webpage that would make the toughest of Nazis cry. A new trend seems to have hit the online riffraff like a dying bear falling off a cliff and onto an unsuspecting chipmunk: The Friends List.

Although the trend has crept forward like some latent viral infection into some of the older folk who populate the site, it has been more notorious with the younger, pre-teen set. Outside of showcasing the inequities and ineptness of our school systems in their daily meanderings online, they have become the networkers of strangers and the miners of unknown acquaintances. These online scavengers collect human beings they’ve never met like I once collected hockey cards. Filling out a large Friends List elevates you in some social circles to God like status, I guess. It means nothing that most of these kids don’t talk past three words (abbreviated, of course) to these strangers…they land in the Friends List and they are friends. Your popularity surges to heights unattainable in the offline world. Here you have hundreds of friends. Scoop them up, inspect them, trade them with others. Ooops, you’ve added this guy twice. Now you have doubles! Friends? Insects in a scrapbook, more like, but at least you have to touch that collection to create it! Here, though, in MySpace land, you have the option to raise and lower your “friends” in standing and rank like songs fluctuating in chart position. You create a virtual Top 40 and can elevate the faithful or cast out the zealots depending on your mood swings. You are the ruler of an autocracy of your own design. It’s like a little dictatorship!

Posting here became an easy choice. So, though my little spot on the Internet was created for the close and the kin, I have left it open to you strangers who might wander on in to read my ramblings. I won’t be adding you to any Friends List or anything but you are welcome just the same. Feel free to comment. Questions are also encouraged. To strangers and close relations alike, please, enjoy my blo…err…online journal.