The person is a blog
Documenting lives and seeking fifteen minutes
January 18, 2005
iranian.com
The East is a career. --
Benjamin Disraeli
In high school, all of my girlfriends had thick
photo albums on their shelves and old shoe boxes full of photos
under their beds.
I, too, participated in this photographic excess -- taking
500 pictures that all looked alike (you and your best friends hugging
and holding red plastic cups full of beer, maybe one girl with
a devilish smile is holding a cigarette, maybe another girl is
playfully kissing a boy's cheek in another shot.) More or
less, they were all the same picture: drunk, smiling, and dumb
-- the same beach, the same park, the same bar. This was not what
photography
was invented for. This obsessive
documentation was merely a reaction to celebrity. We are raised
in an image-obsessed culture which
teaches us that
something didn't really happen if there is no recording of
it. We are saturated by countless photos and images of famous people
in print, on television, and on the big screen. We don't
know if they are famous because they are in the magazines or if
they are in the magazines because they are famous. But somewhere
in the confusion, we begin to crave the sight of our own image.
We want to insert ourselves into the narrative. Look! Proof of
my existence and social life. Proof that I am doing something
and looking cute while I'm doing it. Having your visage mirrored
back to you through photos is fulfilling because it feeds your
narcissism while countering your sense of relative insignificance.
 Is
blogging a part of the same animal? (Not only do you see me at
that hip bar in downtown on Friday night or snorkeling in Bermuda
on my vacation, but you also get to READ about it.) Celebrities
whine about the documentation of their personal lives, while bloggers
intentionally publish it -- from juicy tidbits to confessionals
to humorous anecdotes to depressingly boring facts like the brand
of toothpaste they chose at the market that morning and the way
in which the checker did or did not smile at them in line. Is blogging
a form of documenting our living? If a poem is not a poem unless
it is published, then did an event not occur unless it was blogged
about?
People like to talk about the empowering nature
of blogs. Surely some widely read blogs about policy and cultural
criticism are
empowering in the face of media conglomeration or political censorship.
And blogging, like the teenager with a digital camera, is a form
of resisting passivity (it signifies a sense of unhappiness with
the role of media consumer in pursuit of a role as media maker
-- even when most of the creation is merely imitative).
 But, blogs
are also about seeking your fifteen minutes -- or 50,000 hits.
We seek acceptance on the street and acceptance on the web --
our very identities are on the line. But can we every truly empower
ourselves from a position of wanting? Is blogging perpetuated
by
something as base and ego-driven as our craving for acceptance?
If so, the original premise of a personal journal seems to be
overshadowed by giving 'the public' (usually just other bloggers)
what they want.
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