Nurturing and death in Web 2.0
I thought I’d just try it, see what happens to myself when I don’t post for a while on my own blog. Although it isn’t that interesting for the readers of a blog, you should definitely try it. Because when a blog becomes a McLuhanesque fixed charge in your life, the only way to see what has changed is to disconnect from it. As you can see, it didn’t last that long before I just couldn’t resist to get back to my blog and write down my thoughts and experiences in this post.
Jean-François Berthet made an entry about blogs being like a Tamagotchi on his 365questions.org blog. You name your blog, you shape its form, you could perhaps say you are making a reflection of yourself. Even more than on social networking sites, where the emphasis is more on presentation to your friends. It a reflection of yourself. The sight of a your poor blog with its last message a month ago is almost a heartbreaking experience. In your mind you’re constantly making excuses to the blog like: ‘I’ll post tomorrow’, ‘Sorry blog, I have a writersblock!’ ‘No post today blog, I’m busy.’
This reflection, also on social networking sites, will some day stop. Although a macaber thought, it will surely stop on the day you die. Recent examples are the Myspace profiles of the people killed at Virginia tech, a list containing most of their Myspace profiles can be found at The West Virginia Blogger. A recent example closer to my home is the Hyves page of Gerd-Nan van Wijk, who got beaten and died when leaving his school in Alkmaar. The reflection once created as an enviroment to be nurtured, is now freeze-framed in time. Like a watch that stopped ticking, the virtual spaces stopped moving only leaving the traces of (virtual) friends sending you condolences. A healthy blogger is a healthy blog, and vice versa?
But how about when I stop blogging? Could that be the infamous Death of the Blogger? When the blogger gives up on the blog, is it the blog that dies? And when a blogger dies, is it the blog that lives on, providing a virtual space for condoleances? Could we say that firstly when the blogger dies, the audience adresses the blog. And secondly that when the blog dies, the audience adresses the blogger.
The question we can indirectly ask here is: Who are you blogging for? Perhaps not specifically an imagined audience, perhaps not even yourself but the technology you gave a character. An external agent you set up as a medium between yourself an your imagined audience. An agent that will survive your day and will exist as an in memoriam, but still not being yourself. This also brings me to another question that has been keeping me busy since I started blogging: How long will data stay?