(Bildet er hentet fra http://prprep.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/my-biggest-blog-pet-peeves/)
When I first heard about blogging, I thought that this was a phenomenon reserved young people. I think I have this opinion because the blogs that I see on the internet is owned by teenage people. I don’t think I share this opinion by myself. And it not so strange because in Norway it is most common for people under 30 years old to blog. Often we see young girls blogging about make-up and fashion, because this is their big interests. These teenage girls is often been called pink bloggers because the topic is very girly. Because of this, maybe some people feel disabled to blog because they think that this is reserved young people.
Something we don’t know is that blogging is quite common in the United States. Here are the bloggers older and they write about more serious things such as politics, music and other topics that is current. I think that this trend also will reach Norway in short time.
But I can’t help ask the question. Why do we blog? Why do we want to publish our privacy on the internet where everyone can have an insight in our life?
Of course, we can choose to have a low profile and remain private. Though it’s difficult not to write about who you are and why you have your opinion about politics or music. Some information about our privacy will be publish either we want it or not. And if you don’t get personal, the blog might get boring and people lose interest reading about you.
There is a saying, if you don’t exist on google, then you don’t exist at all. For some people, this saying is almost reality, especially for the young people. In the practice during my education, I and my co-student did an inquiry on a secondary school about young people’s habits when they use the internet. A large proportion of the students had accession to a computer, either their own or the family’s computer. And a larger proportion had a profile either on twitter, facebook, nettby or they had their own blog. Often they had profiles on all of these arenas. My impression is that if these young people didn’t have a profile on the web or a blog, they weren’t popular. It seemed like the young people social life took place on the web. The chatting with their friends took place for example on MSN or that they commented each other’s blog.
Unfortunately the harassment also took place on the web, and this harassment was more brutal than the harassment that takes place face to face. Humiliating comments on each other’s profiles were common and the comments were more brutal than if the person was going to confront each other face to face. This is because they think that they are anonymous when they mob on the net. They can’t feel the personal presence when they write these comments; therefore it’s easier to write more brutal things than to say it face to face.
The harassment isn’t only just about comments. In our multimedia world, today almost everyone have access to a camera. They either take picture or films people in awkward situations, publish it on the web and invite people to make comments about the picture or the film. The picture or film can be removed, but by then the picture or film have reached a lot of people. A large damage have take place and there is not much we can do to fix it. This is a new and seriously harassment and we don’t know how to deal with it yet.
So why will some people expose themselves for something like this? Well, as I mentioned earlier. These people live their social life on the web and if they don’t? Then you aren’t popular, you don’t “exists”. But it’s not just the young people that live their social life on the web. It is becoming more and more seldom that I actually meet my friends face to face. Still I know what’s going on in their life because I either by communicate with them by chat programs or I read their blog.
I think that there also is another reason why we expose ourselves on the web. It’s is a way to draw attention. In our blog, we want to pleasure others by giving them an opportunity to read about our lives. We want to inspire other people, some think blogging is a way to get known and make money. But all in all it comes down to that we want to be seen and recognized, it’s about recognition.
We want an attestation that we actually exist, and the saying is becoming a reality: if you don’t exist on google, then you don’t exist at all!
