I am getting frustratedwith blog readers today. You see, blog readers seem to think that just because one blogs, he blogs his life, and his life truly. He tells you everything about himself. Yeah right. There is so much that goes on in my life that’s just never mentioned on this blog. Same goes for Rachel. That includes some of the more important stuff too.
This goes many ways. With me, wonderful and horrible things happen in my life, and they’re not mentioned because they’re either not on my mind at the moment or I just don’t feel like telling blog readers.
I’ve seen blog readers accuse bloggers of being unintelligent because they have light blog content. I’ve seen blog readers think other bloggers are intelligent because the blogger is always showing of their knowledge or talking about how an old lady said she was so smart. Blogger X is beautiful because no one has seen her in real life and she doesn’t struggle with sin because she’s too prideful to notice the sin in her life.
Still there are the blog readers that offer all sorts of pity to bloggers that don’t deserve pity because they only hear one side of a story…and that side is incidentally filled with lies and deception.
So…to the blog reading and blogging world…get a clue. Really. Don’t judge a blogger by his or her blog.
November 6th, 2003 at 4:59 pm
Well said, Rick.
November 6th, 2003 at 6:58 pm
I can certainly agree with you up to a point, but I don’t see how one can possibly avoid “judging a blogger by his blog.” I mean, the blog is produced by the blogger, right? If we’re going to be judged for every idle word, then bloggers are judged by their blogs. We readers have a hard-wired “judgmentality.” Bloggers should bear that in mind, and blog readers need to bear in mind that we’re far from omniscient. To imagine that we understand a blogger’s life by reading the blog is silly.
November 6th, 2003 at 9:05 pm
Rick, perhaps you should say one shouldn’t judge a blogger by what he doesn’t put on his blog. But I think it’s perfectly fair to form an opinion of a blogger by what’s on his blog. For example, Andrew Sullivan writes about gay issues, so I infer that gay issues are important to him and that what he says about them reflect his opinions.
I don’t take lack of information on a blog to mean anything. But when a blogger posts about something, I feel perfectly within my rights as a reader to form an opinion about him. For you, you clearly get annoyed when people misread your blog. Is that an unfair inference? Not based on this post.
November 6th, 2003 at 9:25 pm
LOL. Whatever you say.
November 6th, 2003 at 11:41 pm
I think that what Rick is saying is that you shouldn’t read a blog and think that you have the blogger figured out. Sure, a blogger is accountable for whatever he blogs, but it doesn’t necessarily define what’s most important to him, what he’s like in person, what his character is, and what his lifestyle is like. This blog doesn’t really show what Rick’s or my life is like. You’d really have to know us in person. This is just a place for us to babble. And yeah, we’re responsible for whatever we say, but that doesn’t mean that you can analyze who we are.
November 7th, 2003 at 5:44 am
I totally agree. So many bloggers act as if they know how intelligent, interesting, Reformed, etc. someone is by their blog. Well, no, you don’t. Stop being so arrogant. These bloggers are usually the ones that find themselves terribly interesting, and it shows.
November 7th, 2003 at 7:24 am
It certainly does show! Right-o Kristen!
November 7th, 2003 at 10:10 am
Fred, not that I really care, but your inference is off. I wasn’t really referring to my blog at all. I don’t think I’ve really had a problem with it myself. I couldn’t care less about the opinions people have formed about me.
Let me give two examples:
Ex 1: I know bloggers that have said things about husband/wife bloggers like, “I feel sorry for Husband X because Wife Y isn’t very smart…I mean, look at what she posts on her blog.” Now I happen to know Wife Y, and I know she’s pretty intelligent…in fact, I’d say she’s probably more intelligent than Husband X. Husband X just happens to use his blog to blog religious material where Wife Y blogs about shopping or kids.
Ex 2: Blogger 2 is the lonely poet that blogs all about how his life sucks and how everyone in it has wronged him. But then, I know the lonely poet, and he has brought all his trouble on himself. But all his comments are like, “It’s okay that you hate your life; it’s not your fault…it’s everybody elses.” It’s just plain stupid. Just because mr. blog reader hears one story, filled with deception, he takes the side of the blogger.
Ex 3: Several people who have the most completely uninteresting blogs are totally interesting in person.
Ex 4: Several people who have the most awesome blogs are bores or can’t relate to people. They just write well.
Part of this is I know about 60 bloggers in real life, and I know blogs hardly reflect reality.
I guess this is simply inherent in blogging, but that doesn’t make me like it.
November 8th, 2003 at 8:27 am
My bad, Rick. But if your first paragraph doesn’t imply it, I’ll eat my proverbial hat.
November 8th, 2003 at 10:32 am
I was just using me as an example to not use others.
November 9th, 2003 at 5:43 pm
I would find it interesting to see if, after spending an hour being around a random blogger, I could identify his/her blog from a list of twenty. It never ceases to surprise me how different some people are in person than they are in print (or blog postings).
November 9th, 2003 at 6:43 pm
Hi Rick and Rachel, you don’t know, but I found your blog some time ago through mutual acquaintences. Have been silent until now–I wanted to tell you how much this post resonated with me. I’ve faced some rather painful accusations from people in my church who found my livejournal and because they happened to see that one side of me, they threw out what they knew to be true of me in my day-to-day living and considered me backslidden. When in fact, I wasn’t. I just happened to use my journal to relate more insignificant/funny/lighthearted details of my day, which they assumed meant that I wasn’t serious or spiritual. They assumed that I was being a hypocrite and trying to be spiritual in one realm and superficial in another.
I found it incredibly frustrating because, as you noted, I didn’t record even the half of what went on in my life in my livejournal. Had they known *all* that passed through my heart and mind and could truly see where I was at in my walk with God, they would’ve realized they had really missed the boat in their assessment and judgement of me.
Anyway–just wanted to say “I know–I understand”. God bless you two.
November 10th, 2003 at 11:17 am
Assuming I’m understanding what you’re saying, Rick, I totally agree. A couple months back I had some guy post the following on my blog:
“As a teenage kid with very little life experience, who lives isolated days with his computer and books, why should people listen to you? You need to get out in the world first! See new places, make new friends, meet girls (gasp!), pick up a basketball instead of a book sometimes. Go a little wild now and then (nothing illegal or immoral!) Get out a bit, then we’ll listen. You may have some writing talent, but your words ring hollow with your lack of maturity and life experience. You are parroting what others have told you or you have read. It needs to be your own, and you only get there through getting out the door yourself. Escape!”
Now…I write about what interests me. My blog is mostly about politics and theology…and since I’m very dissatisfied with what I see in contemporary politics and I’m dissatisfied with much of contemporary evangelical Christianity (and even a fair amount of contemporary Reformed Christianity), I may end up sounding a bit curmudgeony at times.
But I find it ridiculous that a reader thinks he can read my pessimistic posts about politics and infer that I’m a depressesd, sheltered book-worm.
Or, take the times I’ve talked about verses like Psalm 5:5. I talk about that and I get readers commenting asking me what it’s like to live a hate-filled life. Because I choose to discuss Scriptures that interest me I must live a hate-filled life…
I dunno. I can understand why people would make these inferences (I’ve made them myself, especially about “BeneDiction”), I still don’t quite understand why a reader thinks he has the ability to determine exactly what I’m like in person based on what I choose to talk about (and what I say about what I choose to talk about) on my blog.
November 13th, 2003 at 7:37 pm
Above all, don’t judge Rick by this blog post….
:p