nerdout

Just recently a few friends have started blogging with modblog, and it's made me think about blogs and virtual communities in a different way. You might also want to pop over to sushipop to read katy's entry blogging me to get an idea of where i'm coming from on this topic.

I started blogging using movable type, and while it was great (though occasionally frustrating), i did have a support crew to make it possible. Modblog offers it's members/clients a blog 'package' where you have a number of templates which you choose from for your blog's layout and style. It does offer you template-altering options, on a scale from 'very basic' through to more complex (ie from changing the colour of your font to altering your template), and actually seems a nice place to start if you're just beginning and know nothing about blogging or programming or code or any of that internet stuff.
It also offers you a modblog 'community'. One thing I've noticed in my modblogging friends (and further afield in other modblog blogs) is that they tend to read inside the modblog community and not further afield.
I came to blogs by accident, starting with a friend's homepage. I followed their 'links' and discovered the general blog 'form', characterised by big name publishing software like movable type, similar layouts and a general 'diary' style of writing. Since then I've spent more time exploring the blog 'form' - using publishing programs to do other things beyond a personal journal. I use movable type for freeswingpress, though it's obviously not a 'diary' in the confessional sense. I also make great use of blogs like elise's learning movable type, which are far less confessional and far more pragmatic.
I've discovered these alternative uses of the form by reading afield, and i wonder if this sort of reading is faciliated - or even possible - within the beginner-oriented world of modblog?

To refer to katy's entry, now, i've been thinking about the representation of self in blogdom lately a bit as well. Mostly it's stimulated by events such as ben's personal attacks response to my completely spontaneous rant.
I don't think of this dogpossum site as a space for serious thought - it is very much a 'journal' of ideas. not so much a diary - i do self-edit and am reluctant to go all full-disclosure on the intynet. I tend not to edit posts (except in the case of things like the previous dancey entries) but type randomly.
Ben's response to my entry kind of caught me by surprise. surely no one else is reading my blog? But it seems that there are a few people reading. And it made me wonder. Should I change the way I write? Should I start editing, in order to avoid

the times when our bodies or speech betray us and our conscious attempt to control how we are read

(to quote Katy at Sushipop).

I'm not sure I'm capable of that degree of forethought. My worklog is serious thinking. Free swing press is pragmatic thinking. Swing Talk is uncensored dance talk. My thesis is serious writing. I like having space to just crap on about the everyday bits of my life. And on dogpossum, I kind of bring all the bits of my life that I care to make public together. It would be perfect if I could show you all my dancing online as well: the public me goes totally public, all in one space...

The whole issue of multiple blogs facinates me as well. Why do I feel it's necessary to delineate these parts of my life like this? Sure, worklog is hosted on dogpossum (as is the poor, belaboured dogpossum/test and the old freeswingpress), but free swing press proper is a seperate entity with it's own domain. I guess that's mostly a case of wanting to be taken seriously there, and not to have free swing press irrevocably tied to dogpossum. Ironic, isn't it, that ben took dogpossum so seriously?

And that's another issue in itself. Pseudonymity. 'dogpossum' has something of a reputation over on swing talk and in the swing community. I get people coming up to me every now and then saying "are dogpossum? i thought you were a guy!". Talk about ideologically informed discursive representation and interpretation.

Posted by Dogpossum on April 1, 2005 12:10 PM