Before reading this entry, check out this entry of Banter!, another online journal.
(Diane whistles, checks her watch, files what's left of her over-bitten fingernails, flips on the TV to watch Rosie O'Donnell, checks her e-mail, reads Entertainment Weekly, naps.)
You're back? Okay, here goes:
Hi Eddie --
I read your July 19th entry with some interest, because I can only assume you are talking about me. I am one of the online journalers who, a couple of days ago, quoted and commented on an excerpt from Tracy Lee's online journal.
Tracy, who discovered that she had been mentioned on one day in more than one online journal without any warning, responded fairly and somewhat angrily in her journal. This is what I believe Jackie was referring to when she mentioned "hubbub."
(Let me say right now that when I used that quote from Tracy's journal, I used it as a springboard to investigate some of my own feelings about what are the proper boundaries to discuss in a public forum. I didn't mean for it to be commentary on Tracy, although now I see that is exactly what it looks like. I didn't run with the topic, I didn't explore it. I communicated badly.)
How would you feel if you browsed through a number of other online journals and found they had all started discussing you (and not all together flatteringly)? When I came across Tracy's entry I felt a momentary shock and not a little fear. Perhaps she felt something similar when she came across her name in my journal.
This is not "mutual back-slapping between journalers." It felt unpleasant and scary. I have wondered about how far I should go in terms of discussing other people, whether online people or "real" people in my life -- feelings I discussed on the journals mailing list that I maintain. (Self-promotion note: "my" journals mailing list is a low-key, relaxed place to chat with other journalers, including some of the online ones. Info is on my journals page.)
As a result of some feedback I've gotten and the discussion on the list, I've decided when and with whom I should use pseudonyms, which I've (at long last) started doing. Even with people who have their real names in other places in The Paperwork. I don't want anyone coming across their name in my pages in unflattering situations. I don't want anyone else to feel that shock. They might feel it after they decode what the page is about, but not immediately.
One reason I haven't used pseudonyms before is that it seemed kind of silly -- just about everyone my husband and I know is online, almost all of them know one another, etc. However, it isn't fair -- or wise -- to use people's names all the time, because the incident involved is negative, positive, or just none of my f*cking business.
Most online journalers keep pointers to other online journals somewhere on their web pages. There are many reasons for this.
My friend CJ -- the same one from the sojourn to the Southland -- has a wonderful rant on why the web sucks (which she keeps promising to update, but we've learned to ignore her ever-quieter protestations on this point and now we simply pat her on the head). One of CJ's points is that the great benefit of the Web is content, and in order for content to be good it has to be kept fresh, updated, added to.
The term journal comes from the French word jour, which means day, and keeping journal usually means a daily (or frequent) addition.
You see where I'm headed.
Journalers are the non-professional (dare say I, amateur?) columnists of the Web; our content is always changing, we have audiences, there will be discussion. I go on (and on, and on) about that which interests me. Usually right there at that moment. There's no agenda.
If all we did was discuss one another, Eddie, don't you think it would be just a little too incestuous? A little too boring? "Gee, let's see what insert name here has said today. Now I'll comment on it. And insert name here will comment on what I say. My back muscles haven't felt so tingly since the last time I got rolfed."
If having pointers to other online journals is "mutual back-slapping between journalers," does the fact that you have a pointer to my page and I have one to your page (on my journals page) count as mutual back-slapping?
By the way, in regards to
What I do not like is the "click" which seems to exclude some of the newer, lesser known journalists who, in my opinion, do not receive the recognition they deserve.
I have one thing to say: Names, URLs, recommendations.
I really got a kick out of the idea of the "journal click." (By the way, were you making a web browsing pun on click/clique?)
What constitutes a clique? Yes, I went to high school too. But in this context, where people live hundreds if not thousands of miles away from one another, how do they form cliques? How do these cliques get any power? Especially the power to exclude others? What constitutes exclusion of others?
Being the paranoid conspiracy-theorist type that I am, the phrase "journal click" gave me the following scenario:
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A moonless night. An unlit dirt road somewhere out in the country.
Headlights appear over the crest of a hill, followed by an old jalopy, clanking as it bounces on the road. When the truck is all the way over the hill, it quickly switches off its headlights and swerves off the road. Strangely, the truck's noises also disappear in concert with its lights The truck rolls to a stop behind some brush. The DRIVER gets out, just as three vehicles -- unmarked US government sedans -- speed over the hill and down the dirt road. The driver pulls aside the brush to reveal A HIDDEN DOOR. The driver knocks in the rhythm of "Shave and a haircut." DOORKEEPER (O.S.)
DRIVER
The door opens to reveal a lavishly appointed meeting room. The guests sit around a giant mahogany table, which is low to the ground. Rich delicacies are everywhere, and several of the guests smoke hookahs. Some scribble in leather-bound notebooks with gold-tipped fountain pens, other speak into palm-sized tape recorders, and a few type on laptop computers -- the PC users on one side of the room, Mac users on the other. The Infamous Journal Clique! DOORKEEPER
The driver glances up at the sky. The Milky Way is covered by a fleet of Black Helicopters converging on the secret hut. The driver dashes inside and gratefully accepts a notebook and a hookah. DOORKEEPER
DRIVER
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Now, don't you feel better that you got mentioned in someone else's journal?
(By the way, the title of this entry comes from an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer joins The Stonecutters secret organization.)