![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Blogging as conversation?
8/1/09 08:00I'm reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody," which deals with how social software is reducing transaction costs and making things possible that weren't possible before (Wikipedia, for example - or finding photos by GPS tag.) It's a decent book so far, but what's interesting to me is that he gets right, in a way almost no one does, the privateness of livejournal posts. How often have I seen livejournal slapfights where someone says, "If you make a public post you're opening yourself up for criticism and you shouldn't whine about it"? And it is true that if you make a public post you're opening yourself up for criticism, but I still can't help but feel igry* when a crowd piles on to a post that would normally have been read by less than a dozen people.
Shirky says that livejournal posts are more like having a conversation in a mall food court than publishing a newspaper. Even though it's taking place in public, even though you acknowledge that anyone can hear what you're saying, you have some expectation of privacy; it's against the social rules for a complete stranger to walk up to you and start criticizing the life choices that you are discussing within the conversation. And no one expects you to move the conversation to a private room in order to avoid criticism! (Furthermore, Shirky says, this is why all the snark about LJ posts that are just about what you had for lunch or what you did that weekend is beside the point. These posts aren't a failure of blogging, or a failure of the poster to think of something interesting to say; they're just an instance of blogging-as-conversation rather than blogging-as-publication.)
I guess that's where I get the sense that, while it's fine to comment on a stranger's post if not just to start a fight, it's polite to say "Hello, I just wandered in from a friend's friendslist..." -- which I would not consider necessary if I were to comment at one of the bigger blogs!
*Half a dozen years ago someone coined the word 'igry' to describe being embarrassed for someone else when they make a social faux pas. It failed to catch on, but I continue to find it useful.
Shirky says that livejournal posts are more like having a conversation in a mall food court than publishing a newspaper. Even though it's taking place in public, even though you acknowledge that anyone can hear what you're saying, you have some expectation of privacy; it's against the social rules for a complete stranger to walk up to you and start criticizing the life choices that you are discussing within the conversation. And no one expects you to move the conversation to a private room in order to avoid criticism! (Furthermore, Shirky says, this is why all the snark about LJ posts that are just about what you had for lunch or what you did that weekend is beside the point. These posts aren't a failure of blogging, or a failure of the poster to think of something interesting to say; they're just an instance of blogging-as-conversation rather than blogging-as-publication.)
I guess that's where I get the sense that, while it's fine to comment on a stranger's post if not just to start a fight, it's polite to say "Hello, I just wandered in from a friend's friendslist..." -- which I would not consider necessary if I were to comment at one of the bigger blogs!
*Half a dozen years ago someone coined the word 'igry' to describe being embarrassed for someone else when they make a social faux pas. It failed to catch on, but I continue to find it useful.