Flashes of Panic

I’ve half-written posts on this topic before. Can’t really express it well, but thinking about it more doesn’t seem to get me anywhere, either, so maybe you can see if this explains what I’m getting at?

Joan paid me a nice compliment a few days ago, including me in a very short list of daily reads. I’m more interested in the context, though, because it hits pretty close to a sort of personality split I’ve had over this site ever since I started it.

Like most bloggers, I have favorite sites I visit every day (…list…) which creates a feeling of community (in my mind only, perhaps… uh, that’s a little scary if you think about it—not unlike hearing “voices”).

I think this is the common theme: that we’re posting a few words on a regular basis in the hope of contributing to some kind of community. The weirdest part is that we probably don’t know to what degree we’re successful. I had no idea Joan checks in here, though it’s not surprising; I can probably name four or five people I’m pretty sure are reading a given post, but there are probably three times as many I don’t know—won’t ever know, in fact.

Now, we tie in two more ideas: Ralph’s comparison of weblogs (which he calls “Blogistan,”) with the old watering holes of Usenet. (If you don’t remember Usenet, don’t worry.) Grossly oversimplified, Ralph’s point is that weblogs are a lousy tool for building communities.

More recently, Sherry’s “Please check in” post. Stay of Execution is a contender, among my regular reads, for best community; Sherry has somehow attracted and retained a (relatively) large, positive audience, and also has a curious talent for speaking to us/them in a way that both allows us to feel like we’re part of this larger community, but also has a tone as though every post is written just for each individual. Late last week she asked, for reasons unknown, for us to stand up, raise a hand and introduce ourselves; last I looked, there were nearly 130 comments on that post. 130! That’s a bit larger than the little dinner party I was imagining in my head.

The reason I find this fascinating is that I’m perpetually curious about what kind of ripples are coming from this site—in Joan’s term, whose minds I’m speaking in. Yet I consciously avoid trying to measure it overtly. I don’t write like Sherry does, in a way that encourages response and interplay between readers; you can see that just by looking at the comment counts on my posts. This site is not a community in itself, and I think if it was I’d be so self-conscious I’d be perpetually blocked. Instead, as Joan describes, I’m more of a voice in a community you’re each putting together yourselves.

And the tradeoff is that I have no idea who [most of] you are, when you’re reading, how closely, why, etc., and I feel like there’s a sort of observer effect at work: if I ask, it will change things.

So you could say that this entire site—much like the one Joan cites in the body of her post—is a venture in getting comfortable with things I can’t know.

Now Playing: Underneath The Bunker from Life’s Rich Pageant by R.E.M.