Article stealed from xiao sao's blog

Suddenly blogging becomes popular now, after ICQ, BBS, now there is a new form of online activity. What's so special about blog that people all over the world grow an enthusiasm on it?

A blog is like an online personal diary, "a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies", says the definiton from theFreeDictionary.com. However, the major feature of a blog is not its electronic sans-papier form, rather it's the fact that anyone who has access to internet can read what we write down in our blogs.

Diaries are supposed to be private, blogs are not. A diary creates a world that totally belongs to an individual and shuts every body else outside it; a blog invites others' voyeuristic gaze, and the creator of the blog is not only concious about it, he welcomes it.

Hence there is a form of voyeurism going on here. We who write blogs are exhibitionists, we publish our own feelings, experiences and thoughts and invite public peeping. By knowing that someone may be currently reading some of our own posts and these posts will have an effect on them in one way or another, we derive pleasure. Those who read others' blogs enjoys another form of pleasure, voyeuristic pleasure. Yet the identity of a voyeur and an exhibitionist here is also so fluid: we are often both, and a voyeur can also become an exhibitionist by leaving comments behind.

"What are you talking about?!! Are you crazy?"

Be calm and rest assured that such labelling will not have any adverse psychological effect. Because an exhibitionist never exposes his/her true dark secrets as long as he/she is not insane. What we see in blogs are the embellished and censored version of the exhibition and there is hardly a way for any voyeur to uncover what lies beneath. Thus blogs create an illusion of voyeurism, construct a theatre where exhibitionist performance and voyeuristic gaze can take form without risking the danger of the real intrusion of privacy.

So? You are blogging, what can you say about this?

I am writing down these words, I am exhibiting; and I of course will be glad if someone reads it, and either agrees with me or laughs me off. So you see that only proves me right, doesn't it? We need such a stage or an outlet, whatever you call it, and I am glad we have.