We all know that one of the ways blogging is being used is as a medium for people to express themselves, pour their emotions and talk about issues which bother them and get the opinions of complete strangers on those issues. It brings us to the fundamental question. How personal are personal blogs? Isn’t that a misnomer?
We mean when everyone in the world can read your blog, where exactly is the personal element? It is all right if people talk about their grievances against the government or various issues in the country but there are blogs where people talk about extremely personal things like their life, their crushes, their love failures, their grievances against their spouses etc. and they prefer to blog because blogs help you do all this while hiding behind the anonymous tag. You can create an account on blogger or wordpress and call yourself something like “Lost in Love” or “Lonely Soul” and pour out your feelings without worrying about someone finding out who you really are.
So what makes people do it? Write about personal things and be read by millions of strangers across the world?
The main reason is that many a times we relate to complete strangers rather than people whom we are close to or those who we have known for long because sometimes complete strangers have the same problems as we do and can offer better solutions and can empathize with us than people are close to us but don’t know what we are going through. That seems to be one of the main reasons why people choose blogs as a medium to express themselves. Also, writing about anything can help you vent all your frustrations and think clearly and lucidly once all that hurt is out of your system. So what better way to write about it and let people know your problems get their opinions and be anonymous at the same time than creating a blog.
Sharing your life with millions of others across the globe might sound ludicrous but the key thing here is the anonymity factor. There are a lot of really popular blogs (written by anonymous people) and they are hugely popular because it has many people with similar problems contributing to it and also getting advice from others.
There have been occasions when after a few days someone has written an entry on his blog, he wants to remove it. The bloggers do remove, but do not know that it has already been indexed by hundreds of search engines and sites that maintain archives of the web. It’s difficult to get out of them.
So, though personal blogs might not really be personal, they have created something close to a mini revolution now and are here to stay whether we like it or not.
What do you think? Does it make sense to write about all your personal things and thoughts when the whole world is reading?
You know what, I was thinking the same a few days back. How can your personal blogs remain personal when you write all the personal things that everyone can read it? I smile when I see that so many bloggers write about their love, parents likes and dislikes and so much more. Now, tell me is there anything personal that remains with the blogger. Unfortunately not.
There is one downside though. We do not know if the so called personal things are for real or are faked. I enjoy it nevertheless. 🙂 Good topic raised!
Most of the people blog these days in the hope of getting adsense and $$$
It is ironic how people want their blogs to personal but there are open to the whole world. In a way, I do enjoy writing about personal things, but I do keep names anonyomous so it’s pretty safe..at least I tell myself that. Nevertheless, I think blogging is great way to just escape and write down what you feel…without editing! Ah, you did mention the anonymous factor. We all have problems but many other people around the world share the same problem so, it does help people come together to face the problem together. . .
NICE PLACE TO BE IN!
Its is a way to sell your emotions and perhaps nobody loyal when he writes.
hay mara naam sundeep hai ,
I have two blogs – my professional and personal blog .
I advertise my professional blog everywhere and make every effort to publicise it. I try to ping this blog , through several ping machines, so my blog does not get left out .
Personal Blog – I do not publicise my personal blog , and let my blogeditor ping it ….:-)
it depends
god knows
According to me in personel blogs everybody writes his/her very own things, secrets.
after that he allows everyone to read it, then how we can say that blog is personel.
In reality , people takes advantages of title ”personel blog”. In sense ,people becomes
intrested to know about it and this way thet wanna publicity.
Personal Blogs ……well I think it’s a good way to unload oneself……what we need is somebody to talk to and personal Blogs are a great way of putting across your thoughts, inner emotions which many people are scared to talk about but when one somebody writes one can relate to it so many times ….it gives a chance to help people free themselves from their own limiting attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and actions .
I write what I feel from the heart as in my writings most of the time my heart rules my head …..It’s intellectually motivating for me as I like to tread on the path which most people don’t dare.
As they say we wear different masks ar all times and i still cant understand why people have to hide their names to write things ….one has to have the courage and be bold enough to let the world know what they feel ……afterall human thouights play a great role ……see my writings on http://www.razz-ma-tazz.net
Personal still remains personal if it is with the persons who are writers(Bloggers are supposed to be a writer) and writers have something in common that is emotion. So I
can say that personal blogs will reimain personal at large. I also do agree with Shalini’s remark on the subject.available at yahoo Messenger: mansoor1948@yahoo.co.in
Cool. Come by and hypnotize yourself if you please 😉
when we share personal feelings,emotins,events through blogs, then it belongs to all,we cannot say it more a personal. henceforth,lives of politicians,celeberaties is do not remain personal.blogs are the platforms where one can vomit his anger, frustrations,feelings.if anything is personal for someone, he will never share through blogs.
no comments
I wish you would post more often…this is my “coffee drinking” blog:) Edgar Allen
Man is a social being & cannot live alone. But the post-modern world has made him somewhat self-centred & dried out of emotions. Infact, he is not emotionless, he fears to pour out his emotions. He fears to get misunderstood by his near ones. This is when the fantastic idea of “blogging” comes to his rescue. Cry your heart out! There is someone somewhere in the world to sympathize. Speak out your brain storms & however idiotic they are, none will call you a fool! Your kith & kin will be subjective in their reviews but here you are the respected author. the omnipotent creator of his own ideas. Here “personal” & “public” are synonimous words, here the world starts with the ‘subjective’ getting transformed into ‘objective’.
Hats-off to you “blogging”.
It depends…people who blog can also be fullfledged creative liars.
A house is supposed to be private, personal, but the space in which the house abides, is it personal?
The same can be applied to thoughts, words and feelings. There IS nothing personal in this world, blogging is merely an indication of this.
We come back to the question, What is a personal blog, then? I would say a personal blog is one where there is no mediator. No third person interferes, edits, or cuts. There is total freedom of speech, which is the most beautiful ingredient in any art.
There is nothing personal on the net or blog so people should be very careful in giving out personal info
pouring out feeling is ok i feel but personal info a no no
take blogging as ‘Art for Art’s sake’ & u will enjoy it! come 2 the question of ‘personal’ & ‘public’ & u’ll get confused——it’s like pouring a pail of water over a spectrum of colours. The spirit will be lost from the body.
Personal means something that belongs to a person an not a corporation or institution. Personal does not mean PRIVATE. When the internet began only companies could create websites and blogs. Now even a person can do it – that’s Personal Blogging.
An analogy with computers will help here clarify. During the initial years of computing only large corporations owned computers (manly mainframes). A revolution began when it became available to an individual person – birth of Personal Computers! NOT PRIVATE computers – just personal – belonging to a single person. Now you have Personal Blogs instead of Corporate Blogs – a web 2.0 phenomenon! In short these are not meant to be private blogs. Hope that makes things clearer!
cool article….
There is a difference personal, which only belongs to you. Private means if you want to share it with somone. This differs from person to person, that is how i a person takes it. Like i am a personal person. I would hate to share my personal thoughts, but when it comes to private it is okay. Hope i came across okay.
for me, it does makes sense. i do write blogs about my personal experiences, most of it are my emotions about certain things. doing stuff like this lessens my depression because somehow i am able to release the pain inside of me by putting it into words. who cares if the whole world is reading. they don’t know me, likewise i don’t know them too. i think, it depends upon the writer how personal the things he’s going to put in his blog.
Hi, this is nice opinion. I am agree with this opinion. There is no space for private or personal here.
pranvi
everything is not personal. personal is the thing which effects on one’s life adversely. every personal moments may be very useful to any other person. experience is the most important thing in the life. life is totally depend on experiences. so even personal experiences must be shared.
Pradeep
http://apnidiary.blogspot.com
personal blogs do not remain personal but what a wonderful way to air your feelings and get read (sic! it is again self-pity at play!!) being a loner myself, the blogosphere is a great place .
i feel like a great waallet of my who secure our ffeeling all thing which we hide to other so i very impress of blogadda thanks………[
hi, Blog is like a amigo, who can personalize his memories to his amigos,
thank you for information
How you think when the economic crisis will end? I wish to make statistics of independent opinions!
It is obivious that you are writing personal things on a public platefom,it does not remain personal, but nice way to express your self and so many time gain sympathy from others.
One has to decide how much personal stuff he has to leave on the net for strangers to read.
Wow I was just thinking about this problem of how much personal a personal blog should be. well may be I’m a starter now, but at least I know what I’m writing and what-not.
that’s why they are personal, not ultra personal. One thing is if a blogger writes down his/her intimate experiences and feelings, some readers or even fellow bloggers may not like it. Like you can relate to The Compulsive Confessor(thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com)’s case. Most people just called it a Sex and the City rip off.
But when you are writing a personal blog you have a choice. It’s not compulsory to write everything down and nobody can force you remove your posts either.
The definition of a personal blog is that it does not have to be limited to anything. A personal blog can have anything and everything that the blogger likes. And yes, the reader may like it or not, that does not stop him or her.
people write the things what they want to share with others may be personal or othervise some creative works are also being written when one is on net i think nothing is personal
It depends upon a blogger as for what purpose is he using is blog for
I think you are mistaking personal for private.
I agree with Ananad Nalya thanx
one of the things I believe missing here is people want encouragement and emotional support which they are not able to get from their near and dears.
Just to fill that emptiness people share their personal and even private issues to get it from strangers.
I was just about to say what Anand did. Personal does not mean private. When I tag my blog as personal, I only meant to say that most topic would be related to me, and my life. It doesn’t mean that I would reveal my secrets, or details of my relationships necessarily. It is totally inappropriate to say that they want publicity (perhaps of their writing ability, but nothing else), or that they have no support in life! Most blogs I read are of genuinely happy people, with a perfectly good support system in their family and friends!
I am usually that silent guy who expresses his words through writing, but sometimes I did think that out of a million people, someone out there might go through the same situation like me and what I think and what I did might help them too, so in 2007 I started to write my blog – my own personal blog. Being a normal guy, i just used to open my heart and just write what ever was flowing into my veins.. and didn’t care much about what others felt about it….
But as i started writing down the months, I realized that I had a style for it, and that I shouldn’t loose this style within me, I slowly realized that my writing was changing peoples lives and I was happy that I was becoming a part of it….Once i knew that, life was never again the same, I wrote the most amazing parts of my life and I wrote it with all my heart, I told people that in all our live, the best of happiness comes from the littlest of things we do and share……
http://gravityoflife.blogspot.com/
Life has always been this good 🙂 Keep Writing !