Sharon Kim skim@media.ucla.edu
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If you saw someone’s diary lying around, invitingly open
as if calling out to you, would you read it?
This is the premise behind online diaries, a new breed of Web
sites I’ve noticed lately. They’re garnering an
increasing amount of members who sign up at the sites to claim a
piece of internet property to ““ what else? ““ keep an
online diary.
What would motivate someone to keep take part in this? Having a
diary in such a public arena as the internet seems odd to me.
Now this may be because I’m not even capable of keeping a
traditional diary ““ the kind you might find in a good
stationery store, the kind with nice thick “acid-free”
paper (whatever that means) and a satin ribbon for a bookmark. You
bring the diary home and promise to write down every detail of
every day, from the most mundane to the most juicy. But after a few
enthusiastic days, you tend to get tired of it ““ get tired of
feeling obligated to write an entry for that uneventful day, tired
of writing things like “Woke up late. Saw a movie. Had fight
with D.” Personally, by the end of the month, I’d
become so unenthusiastic I’d end up just writing “Late.
Movie. Fight.” And then I’d stop altogether. At the end
of the day, the potentially therapeutic act of recounting details
about a distressing event was outweighed by my desire to sleep.
One of the reasons, however, that made having a diary so
appealing was that I had a silent confidant, a place where I could
say anything without fear of being judged by others.
Online diaries blow this right out of the water. The diary
entries are public, being on the internet, after all. Anyone, from
friends and family to voyeuristic strangers can read your innermost
thoughts.
It makes me wonder: Are these people writing these diaries
because they crave attention? Perhaps they take a sadistic joy in
making their lives sound as depressing and misery-ridden for their
potential readers in Scandinavia.
For the sake of research I visited some diaries and sent out
mass e-mails for my very scientific, completely random survey to
ask online diary writers about their motivation for wearing their
heart on their sleeves. Or in this case, on their Web sites.
Judging by the responses I’ve received, it seems the lure
of keeping an online diary is exactly because others can read it.
People with problems that vary from depression to bulimia keep
online diaries for the explicit purpose of having them read and
getting feedback and advice. In fact, some join Web rings with
others facing similar problems.
Even those with milder angst find benefit as well. Apparently
they feel having an outlet to talk about their feelings, and having
people read them, is “cathartic.”
One obvious advantage for writing online is it’s a lot
easier than having to pick up a pen and scratch out sentences. As
for motivation, the novelty of having a place to post your diary
should get you through at least a few months. Couple that with
e-mails from daily readers, and you’ve got yourself loads of
reasons for sticking with the diary.
At first, I thought that online diaries were trifles not to be
taken seriously, that they were simply testaments to the
peeping-Tom craze society seems to be inclined toward, and that it
was dismaying to think that people have to use an online diary in
order to be able to talk about their problems. But it seems online
diaries have their many benefits, and perhaps I should give the
cynicism a rest.
Relating and connecting with others; isn’t this what we
live for? Online diary writers send “forth filament,
filament, filament” out into the Web hoping for a connection,
like Whitman’s patient little spider. It seems like a nice
thing.