Whilst staring in wide-eyed wonderment at a blank computer screen, musing over topics seemingly suitable for this entry, I eventually turned my attention to the very phenomenon of blogging itself.
Evidently new to the blogosphere, I slowly realised that I was absolutely, 100 percent missing the point. By actively looking for a ʻblog friendlyʼ subject I was rejecting the most fundamental raw ingredient: my own stream of consciousness. As addictive as reading your sisterʼs diary, it is exactly this personal content that attracts readers and, in some cases, more hits than big e-commerce websites.
Whilst they may not all be Mrs. Dalloway, there is an entire community of bloggers daily recording their subjective ramblingsfor the world to read.
Whilst blogging may be cathartic for some and compelling for others, this unprocessed form of information sharing can lead to trouble as we negotiate a new type of media which defies categorisation as either public or private.
One such example occurred to me a few days ago when listening to the moralistic criticisms of a reporter relaying the latest sorry tale of Facebook faux pas. On this occasion, the offending parties were a group of Roman Catholic schoolgirls who had published a colourful account detailing their dislike of a certain teacher. Now, you will agree that these god-fearing young ladies do not necessarily constitute the most threatening of all social groups; nevertheless, the teacher concerned is receiving counselling and the school has decided to make an example of them. Tut-tut.
Now, I am not looking to congratulate these girls but I am at least willing to empathise with them; children have been making rude comments about teachers to their peers since the beginning of time! As the simplest form of rebellion, dare I say I may have taken a compass and etched the odd ʻMiss X smellsʼ inanely into the back of a cubicle door in my time, as I am sure that this unforgiving reporter would have done.
So big deal, here are some children who donʼt like a teacher but their fundamental mistake was the forum that they chose to say so. Whilst Facebook masquerades as a compassionate champion of free expression, as it says on their homepage: ʻʻFacebook helps you to share content with the people in your lifeʼʼ beware, as there are potentially another 120 million flies on your wall.
Surely these girls wouldnʼt dream of writing their name under a piece of slanderous graffiti or running up to the teacher in question, waving their arms in the air and telling them that they suck; yet, it seemed safe to do so through the veils of their seemingly private online lives. So other than martyring themselves for freedom of speech, it seems then that they have simply fallen down this chasm between public and private discourse that did not exist ten years ago.
So if social networking sites are not akin to whispering at the back of a classroom and blogging is not balanced, reliable journalism - there is a new media in town which is struggling to find an identity: itʼs popular, opinionated and roughing things up a bit!
Tabitha Sloper
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