My attitude to blogs.

I have a love-hate relationship with blogs.
Over the past decade, I have used the internet to show something about myself in the forms of websites, blogs, social networking sites, and numerous online aliases. I have revealed a bit of myself in every outlet, and have always considered expression as one of their roles. I am actively updating my social network alias and blog, but currently I am still struggling with blogs. I have an issue with allowing strangers reading about me. I am afraid of strangers knowing me when I don't know they are in the process of doing so.

Blogs reveal a lot more than my networking sites, or at least what I choose to complete in the input forms. They allow words and images and multimedia that reveal what you choose to reveal, opinions, attitudes, preferences, and so much more. I feel very vulnerable to readers of my blogs because I don't know they are there. My fear might be hyped up by the media's portrayal of stalkers, spies, wiretapping, monitoring, and other activities to track people's lives. Then, at the same time, I would feel very self-centered because just as mentioned in class, there are millions of blogs in this world, so how likely do you think people will stumble upon your blog, and how likely are they interested in tracking you?

Another contradiction I practice is this very love hate relationship. I engage in this paranoia because I am dependent on this self expression to the people I know, who are my intended audience of these online outlets. This means I am willing to risk strangers knowing me for the sake of having my family, friends, and potential friends know me better.

Wow, that makes me even more self-centered!