Blogs, 25 Facts

When I studied blogs and its increasing power and presence in our generation in my media studies class last semester, my professor said that bloggers willingly disclose information about themselves/their lifestyles/their thought processes to the internet. Each blogger carefully chooses (consciously or unconsciously) how they portray themselves on an internet webpage. Whether the readers are people they know or do not know, each blogger maintains a certain identity about themselves through the things they post on their blog: words, videos, music, links to other webpages and the like.

Since that lecture, her words remain in the back of my head each time I start another blog post. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that every blogger does so in his/her own way. "Hmph! I don't want people to peek into my life...that's creepy...I don't want them to know that.." But isn't that what we want when we put ourselves out there? At the same time, however, we each exercise our own freedom -- to say what we want to say, to trade off some information about ourselves to read and learn about others.

Recently the "25 things about me" facebook note has become quite the trend. I did it yesterday while at work, and within 24 hours my notifications have exponentially increased with more and more friends disclosing information about themselves, their habits, and their likes/dislikes. It's secretly a lot of fun, people are telling me what they have in common with me and I've been doing the same. It's odd that this one has been so popular when a couple months ago the same exact concept but with only 16 facts instead of 25 didn't get so much attention among my arena of facebook friends at least. It's fun, to learn facts about our friends -- the things that wouldn't normally come up in an everyday conversation, especially all 25 at once. It's also interesting and quite a learning experience for yourself as you sit there and try to come up with these facts about yourself, things you wouldn't normally let your mind wander to.

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I'm going to take today off after classes end at 5. Do laundry, watch some tv, make dinner, clean the house, journal, listen to music, drink tea in my pjs. I think it'll be good for me.