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By MARK REILLEY
Friday, August 22, 2003
TALLULAH BANKHEAD said, “Only good girls keep diaries, bad girls don’t
have time.” Cyberspace, however, is crawling with girls and boys, good
and bad, who regularly share their journals.
These aren’t pink plastic, hasp-locked “My Diary” confessionals
concealed under the bedroom mattress; they’re Internet diaries, called “blogs.” Bloggers
post their entries to the Internet to be seen by anyone with prying eyes and
a clicking mouse. Unlike a prying older brother, a blog audience inserts its
own comments.
Web logs can smooth the coming out process, though for bloggers like Bart
at NYU, secrecy is now augmented by a DSL connection and isolation is replaced
by an audience of cyber soul mates.
Bart used his blog to announce his coming out. Bart often gets e-mail from
others in the process of coming out who, he says, “mention how surprised
they are to find someone else who went through the same thing they did.” Rather
than directly tell his friends he was gay, he let them read about it in a Web
posting:
“There is something I have wanted to write about here that I haven’t
been able to write about before, partly because I haven’t felt ready
to tell anyone … What I’m trying to say is that I am gay.” -Bart
By Shan: I just wanted to say that your story sounds similar to mine.
By Chris: I was like you a few years ago too…
UNLIKE BRIEF AND often calculated chat room profiles and photographs, Web
logs can offer a more meaningful portrait of the person behind the keyboard.
Bart is just one of an estimated 4 million bloggers.
Beginning blogging is easy. Many sites will store your journal on their computers
and supply you with free authoring software, provided you display their logo
in your journal. For $15, you can get an ad-free blog.
Despite their techie format, Web logs aren’t much different than “pillow
books,” the first diaries written by Japanese women in the 10th century
royal court. Last month, almost a quarter of a million people visited the blog
of gay conservative political and social commentator Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan,
who lives in Washington, D.C., suggests the expanding “blogosphere” will
have a formidable impact on the literary world because, “a writer no
longer needs a wealthy proprietor to get his message across to readers. Younger
or more talented writers can bypass [the established newspaper market] and
write directly to an audience.”
Though blogs have reached critical mass, Sullivan thinks it is too soon to
tell if blogs are part of a true media revolution or are just a passing fad,
especially since only about 60 percent of them are updated more than once a
month.
Author, activist and blogger Keith Boykin, the former executive director of
the National Black Lesbian & Gay Leadership Forum, updates his journal
almost 300 times a year. Boykin, who lives in New York, says he draws the line
at friends and family because, “I don’t want people to stop talking
to me out of fear that our conversations will end up on the Internet.”
With archives going back to the1980s, Boykin’s site gets lots of e-mail
from people who are surprised by the content but inspired by the honesty of
his disclosures.
“All I do is write what I feel, click a few buttons, and presto, I’m published,” he
explains.
THAT SECRETS CAN be shared so easily doesn’t seem to intimidate most
bloggers. Marti, a 35-year-old male-to-female transsexual, journals to stay
in touch with children she lost contact with after her divorce. “Transitioning
has cost me dearly — money, family, and friends,” she says. “Yet
in that void, I have met some truly great people. I consider them my ‘chosen
family.’” Marti’s blog includes photographs, occasional rants,
and links for other transgender online users looking for support.
For “Shan” from Southern Illinois, online honesty is crucial to
an authentic blog but that candor may become a liability. “I’ve
made many friends through my site, and a few enemies too,” he says. Shan
recommends using a pseudonym or keeping two journals: one for strangers to
read and one for the friends.
“My web log is EXACTLY me in real life. I don’t hold back in my
journal,” he said. “Even if it’s the 200th time I’ve
let my heart get crushed and I know that I’m going to get ‘I told
you so’ [responses] just like the other 199 times, I post anyway.”
Toby, from Washington D.C., only appears to be “male, gay, and fabulously
interesting.” He is gay and he is male, but Toby says, “If my online
persona were the same as my ‘real’ self, my Web log would bore
you to tears.”
He never meets his readers or fellow bloggers because, “Imagine discovering
that Cher isn’t nearly as fabulous in person as she appears to be on
television. I consider myself far more entertaining on a monitor than over
a cup of coffee.”
Blogs are evolving. Newer sites are becoming less personal and more corporate.
Some now request online donations to pay for bandwidth or provide links that
support political agendas.
But the basic concept remains the same: people sharing themselves through
their diaries. To be remembered (though maybe not always at our best) is perhaps
the major reason why any of us bother to keep diaries.
new.blogger.com/home.pyra
www.diary-x.com
www.livejournal.com/create.bml
www.geocities.com/matthewkingston
(Queer Filter listing of GLBT blogs)
blogsearchengine.com/lifestyle_blogs.html
(Gay blog search engine)
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