Skewed perspective

Rachael and I were talking about blogs and blogging the other day, and she mentioned how many of her friends have Live Journals that they use as a place to vent and rant.

If you've ever spent any time skimming through Live Journals, you'd come away with the impression that half the teens in America are Columbine-capable manic depressives with a severe death wish.

Rachael admitted to being worried about some of her friends that she doesn't see very often, because she reads their Live Journals and expects them to be seriously screwed up in the head. Then, when they get together she's a little freaked by how normal and happy they are.

That's the problem with blogs in general. Your place to rant and rave or bare all or throw out wry commentary is nothing more than a mask. Intimacy is simulated by the details and personal nature of one's posts, but we're all just looking at the face the author wishes us to see. When you don't understand that or forget, then you get a very skewed perspective on who a person is and what they're really like. Little wonder then, that not only is it almost impossible to adaquately explain what blogging is to someone who's never heard of it, but that the whole blogging phenomenom is so misunderstood by pretty much everyone (media, politicians and even bloggers themselves).