Mental Masturbation.
[originally posted to www.gothicplanet.com on 3/17/05]
I believe online journals and blogs are 21st Century diaries. As such, I asked myself this question before beginning this one:
If your journal were hand-written, would you expect everyone in your life to read it?
But through the magic of the Internet, some blog writers expect that everyone take an interest in the smallest, most microscopic details of their lives.
Got up late today.
Had Frosted Mini-Wheats.
Missed the bus.
Gout is acting up.
Don’t even get me started on the bad poetry out there. But don’t misunderstand me, either: It’s okay to post the minutest detail of your life. Post what is important to you. Just don’t expect that I read every word of it.
I skim quite a few LiveJournals and blogs. Some of it is stellar. Most of it is garbage. Including this. Just because I find it important enough to post these thoughts, it doesn’t mean they are important enough for everyone to read them or care about what I have to say.
Nor is it important for anyone who agrees, disagrees, or otherwise to say so. I leave the comments “on” here so people feel free to say what’s on their mind, but I don’t read them. If someone read my hand-written journal, I would not then hand them a pen so they could fill the margins with what they thought about it.
Diaries and journals, with few exceptions and through the ages, have been the place a person writes down what is important to him/her alone. The opinions of others was hardly ever considered. A journal is a monologue. Dialogues and group conversations exist in abundance in online forums like those found at Yahoo! or MSN.
I have given this blog URL out to a few people who are important to me and who may be interested in what I have to say. But if they are not, I don’t hold that against them. Sometimes I’m not interested in what they have to say, either.
I have my reasons for not reading the comments area here; each of my reasons relates to boredom, banality, boorishness, or the disintegration of the “peanut gallery” into an actual flame war. I’ve been online since 1989 and the flames still burn at the same height and intensity they always have, since way back in the BBS days. Ho-hum.
So, do you really still wonder why I don’t join the LiveJournal “community?” Exactly: This is mine and it is for me. If you are reading this, it is because I have chosen to freely share my mental masturbations. You have opted to be here, but your presence doesn’t mean it’s an orgy.