Digital Undersharing
In the early days, when I first started writing on here, I believed that a blog was meant to be something impersonal. I tried to leave the focus on my ideas, to make the content of what I saying center stage, and only to refer to myself to the extent that it was able to help me in conveying my point.
I modeled what I was doing after what I saw others doing. Most popular blogs are that way; people go to them seeking ideas or advice that will help them in their own life, and they tend to be pretty impersonal. Popular bloggers aren't discussing the trials and tribulations they were having getting their children to school that morning, unless the blog post happens to be about commuting or child-rearing.
What works for the very popular doesn't work for the rest of us. There are many, many people blogging on the Internet, exactly in the way that I am doing here and now. Most of these blogs don't get read by anyone. For me, this doesn't bother me, because I never started doing this for fame or money; I just need to write. I need some sort of outlet for my thoughts. It's just a wonderful bonus that I live in a time when technology allows me to write things, share them publicly, and they sit out there in cyberspace for someone else to read.
Just the possibility that some of my words might accidentally reach another human being while they're Googling around for something else is enough for me. I've tried to imagine writing the way I do now on a typewriter, 50 years ago, composing my thoughts on paper and filing them away in the bottom drawer of my desk. Somehow, the prospect of doing this seems far less satisfying. It seems like it would be a very lonely prospect. After the stack of paper had gotten big enough, once I had a critical mass of unshared thoughts, I would probably fish it out of the drawer and try to massage all of it into a publishable form. I would struggle to get it distributed to the world as a book. I need to know that someone could read what I write, that someone might connect with my thoughts...even if I never know about it.
An impersonal blog that shares the writer's ideas without sharing the writer works for a certain kind of blog. It's when the reputation of the writer is substantial enough that people seek out their ideas, precisely because the reputation of the writer has lent credence or importance to the ideas. People would seek out the blog of Malcolm Gladwell, because he's Malcolm Gladwell. If he were to blog under a pseudonym, the strength of his writing might eventually give this pseudonymous blog some traction. But if you tried to start your own blog and write like Malcolm Gladwell, people aren't browsing the Internet looking for people who write like him.
In the last few years, I've found that personal blogs matter the most to me when I can truly connect not only with the writer's ideas, but the writer themselves. A blog might be about ideas, but if the writer hides who they are, if they don't reveal some part of themselves, if they're completely unwilling to be vulnerable or take any risks whatsoever, then it usually isn't interesting.
I don't mean that I want the writer to humiliate themselves; I'm not interested in the kind of exhibitionism that draws people to reality TV. But as readers, we're all looking for connection with someone else's humanity.
In the digital world, the biggest risk is not that we'll overshare, but that we undershare. Everyone complains about people who post pictures of food that they're about to eat on social media. I don't think this is oversharing per se. The problem is that this kind of post isn't crafted with the audience in mind. The sharer has revealed nothing about themselves. I read it and come away with no deeper understanding of who the sharer is. They've taken no risks. They've made no effort to stretch the minds of the recipients of the message. In this case, they haven't even considered the recipients of the message. It's easy. It's a kind of digital fast food. It does fill space, but the content is ultimately hollow. This is undersharing.
Looking back, I can see that I've made this mistake in many of the early entries I wrote on this blog. Many of them amount to little more than "here's some idea for a business". What am I trying to communicate with this kind of thing? Creativity begets creativity, so at the time, I hoped that the expression of my own ideas was able to catalyze the reader into generating their own ideas. But I feel like there's an implicit condescension in all of these old entries that I never intended that makes me want to bury my head in my hands. "Look at how creative I am!" Is this of any use to anyone? As someone trying to write, it's like someone opening up my yearbook from junior high.
Naturally, it is possible to overshare. There are things about myself that I wouldn't reveal to the Internet. That's not to say that I have deep dark secrets, but some aspects of a person's life are so personal that I would never recommend anyone share them online. It wouldn't benefit anyone else to read about these kinds of things anyway. There is a balance to all of this.
I do understand that there's more potential for truly reaching someone out there on the Internet with my writing if I'm generally honest about my own foibles. It profits me nothing to offer the impression that I'm somehow incapable of making mistakes. I make mistakes all the time, and more often than I'd care to admit, I have great difficulty picking myself up and moving forward from them. It can be painful to learn from your mistakes.
Immersion in Internet culture can often make it seem like you're connected with people, but in the age of undersharing, you can ultimately come to feel that you're actually far more isolated than connected. Digital communication in social media has become so impersonal, where people seem preoccupied with crafting an image of themselves and their life. You can begin to believe that no one else faces the difficulties that you face. You can internalize the flawed notion that you're the only person on the planet with an imperfect life. All this connection can actually instill a sense of loneliness. In this, there is very real potential harm that can befall an individual.
In light of this, we all have the opportunity to do the opposite and to be honest about who we are. Not to seek sympathy, but to let other the people who would receive our messages know that we all have more in common with one another than we often feel. I'm not claiming this is easy; it takes real guts to expose the real you to the world, in any context. There's always the risk that someone will accuse you of oversharing. But to all of us as human beings, this isn't where the real danger lies.
I modeled what I was doing after what I saw others doing. Most popular blogs are that way; people go to them seeking ideas or advice that will help them in their own life, and they tend to be pretty impersonal. Popular bloggers aren't discussing the trials and tribulations they were having getting their children to school that morning, unless the blog post happens to be about commuting or child-rearing.
What works for the very popular doesn't work for the rest of us. There are many, many people blogging on the Internet, exactly in the way that I am doing here and now. Most of these blogs don't get read by anyone. For me, this doesn't bother me, because I never started doing this for fame or money; I just need to write. I need some sort of outlet for my thoughts. It's just a wonderful bonus that I live in a time when technology allows me to write things, share them publicly, and they sit out there in cyberspace for someone else to read.
Just the possibility that some of my words might accidentally reach another human being while they're Googling around for something else is enough for me. I've tried to imagine writing the way I do now on a typewriter, 50 years ago, composing my thoughts on paper and filing them away in the bottom drawer of my desk. Somehow, the prospect of doing this seems far less satisfying. It seems like it would be a very lonely prospect. After the stack of paper had gotten big enough, once I had a critical mass of unshared thoughts, I would probably fish it out of the drawer and try to massage all of it into a publishable form. I would struggle to get it distributed to the world as a book. I need to know that someone could read what I write, that someone might connect with my thoughts...even if I never know about it.
An impersonal blog that shares the writer's ideas without sharing the writer works for a certain kind of blog. It's when the reputation of the writer is substantial enough that people seek out their ideas, precisely because the reputation of the writer has lent credence or importance to the ideas. People would seek out the blog of Malcolm Gladwell, because he's Malcolm Gladwell. If he were to blog under a pseudonym, the strength of his writing might eventually give this pseudonymous blog some traction. But if you tried to start your own blog and write like Malcolm Gladwell, people aren't browsing the Internet looking for people who write like him.
In the last few years, I've found that personal blogs matter the most to me when I can truly connect not only with the writer's ideas, but the writer themselves. A blog might be about ideas, but if the writer hides who they are, if they don't reveal some part of themselves, if they're completely unwilling to be vulnerable or take any risks whatsoever, then it usually isn't interesting.
I don't mean that I want the writer to humiliate themselves; I'm not interested in the kind of exhibitionism that draws people to reality TV. But as readers, we're all looking for connection with someone else's humanity.
In the digital world, the biggest risk is not that we'll overshare, but that we undershare. Everyone complains about people who post pictures of food that they're about to eat on social media. I don't think this is oversharing per se. The problem is that this kind of post isn't crafted with the audience in mind. The sharer has revealed nothing about themselves. I read it and come away with no deeper understanding of who the sharer is. They've taken no risks. They've made no effort to stretch the minds of the recipients of the message. In this case, they haven't even considered the recipients of the message. It's easy. It's a kind of digital fast food. It does fill space, but the content is ultimately hollow. This is undersharing.
Looking back, I can see that I've made this mistake in many of the early entries I wrote on this blog. Many of them amount to little more than "here's some idea for a business". What am I trying to communicate with this kind of thing? Creativity begets creativity, so at the time, I hoped that the expression of my own ideas was able to catalyze the reader into generating their own ideas. But I feel like there's an implicit condescension in all of these old entries that I never intended that makes me want to bury my head in my hands. "Look at how creative I am!" Is this of any use to anyone? As someone trying to write, it's like someone opening up my yearbook from junior high.
Naturally, it is possible to overshare. There are things about myself that I wouldn't reveal to the Internet. That's not to say that I have deep dark secrets, but some aspects of a person's life are so personal that I would never recommend anyone share them online. It wouldn't benefit anyone else to read about these kinds of things anyway. There is a balance to all of this.
I do understand that there's more potential for truly reaching someone out there on the Internet with my writing if I'm generally honest about my own foibles. It profits me nothing to offer the impression that I'm somehow incapable of making mistakes. I make mistakes all the time, and more often than I'd care to admit, I have great difficulty picking myself up and moving forward from them. It can be painful to learn from your mistakes.
Immersion in Internet culture can often make it seem like you're connected with people, but in the age of undersharing, you can ultimately come to feel that you're actually far more isolated than connected. Digital communication in social media has become so impersonal, where people seem preoccupied with crafting an image of themselves and their life. You can begin to believe that no one else faces the difficulties that you face. You can internalize the flawed notion that you're the only person on the planet with an imperfect life. All this connection can actually instill a sense of loneliness. In this, there is very real potential harm that can befall an individual.
In light of this, we all have the opportunity to do the opposite and to be honest about who we are. Not to seek sympathy, but to let other the people who would receive our messages know that we all have more in common with one another than we often feel. I'm not claiming this is easy; it takes real guts to expose the real you to the world, in any context. There's always the risk that someone will accuse you of oversharing. But to all of us as human beings, this isn't where the real danger lies.