Friday 8 October 2010

BEDESO #7 (Editing)

I was going to talk about last night’s little mishap on the way home with broken break lights that weren’t (don’t worry, it’s sorted now!) but instead I’m going to talk about something else leaving that little nugget dangling....

When watching YouTube videos, particularly vlogs, you often become very aware how little you know about the people you’re watching. Sure, it often feels like you know them really well. It feels as if they’re sharing their whole lives with you but in reality they’re only sharing the bits they want to. Sure, some people who do daily videos share a lot of things but they still don’t share everything.

Some YouTubers have brought this up but it’s an avoidable fact that they only show the version of themselves that they want us to see. They only share the bits where they are being entertaining or interesting. They don’t share the things they only want their close friends to know, they don’t share every intimate detail and they certainly don’t tell you everything.

I was thinking. I can be like this a lot with my blog. Like the thing I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. Sure, I’ve told some of my friends exactly what happened but that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell the whole internet.

Although blogs are quite a bit like diaries, especially when you end up doing them daily, you don’t tell a blog everything. I’ve never seen a living person willingly let others read their diary and writing the same thoughts on a computer doesn’t suddenly make them less personal, especially when you’re name is attached to what you’re saying. Sure, I could have made my blogs totally anonymous but I didn’t.

Just like YouTubers, I tend to only share the things that I think you might find interesting or amusing. Sure, occasionally I write some blogs that touch some subjects that are close to my heart but I don’t tell you the detail. I let you guess those or, if you’re my friend, I wait for you to ask. Sometimes I forget that I have an audience when writing these blog but that rarely lasts more than a sentence and then the backspace is rapidly pressed and that sentence is lost forever.

Sure, I find it easier to share on blogger but that doesn’t mean I share everything. Nobody shares everything with anybody anyway. I’m sure each person you know you can think of something that you haven’t told them. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not, but while we’re all still humans I think we need that privacy.

            “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

Current book I’m reading: The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy (not that I've had time to actually read it recently)
Last TV show watched: How I met your mother (latest episode on E4 but I can't remember what it's called)
Current programs/web pages open: Blogger - Edit posts, iPlayer, Twitter, iTunes, msn,
Number of people I’m talking to on msn/Facebook: 1

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