Thursday, October 14, 2004

Dirty laundry

I have to wonder...what happened to the days when people would carefully lock up their diaries and hang the keys around their necks to make sure no one would be able to get into it? What happened to tucking their journals under their mattresses so no one would find them? (Personally, I pulled the bottom drawer out of my dresser, dropped my diary underneath it, and put the drawer back in when I was a teenager.) When did the airing of personal dirty laundry become popular?

There are so many blogs out there! And a diary is exactly what a lot of them (like mine) are. Why do we do this, I wonder? Why do we post every little detail about our personal lives online? Why do we sign up with webrings and places like Blog Explosion in order to get more people to read about our personal business?

Did it start with Jerry Springer? Did everyone suddenly say, "Hey! What a grand idea! But my life isn't exciting enough to go on the talk show circuit, so I'll just start an online journal."??? Are we looking for confirmation from others that whatever we are going through is normal, and that how we feel about everything is ok? Do we have fewer good friendships in real life, so we look for sympathy from total strangers as we sit behind our keyboards with relative anonymity? Is it easier to deal with being judged in writing from someone we don't know than it is to hear it verbally from someone we do? Are we looking for perspectives that we might not otherwise have access to?

These are the things I think about when I can't sleep at night.

Why do you think people are airing their dirty laundry? And what do you think about when you can't sleep?