WHILE I LIKE THE IDEA OF BLOGGING AND EXPRESSING YOUR LIFE AS A "WORK OF ART" ON THE NET, I have been stricken in recent days about the inanity of "confessing all your secrets" to the world in a totally transparent way. Maybe I have been reading too much Baudrillard lately, but there does seem to be something perverse at the heart of the blogging movement. If you were a high school student, for example, you wouldn't leave photocopies of your diary stuck up all over the classroom walls -- with your photo and phone number attached, and details of all the people you fancy, and your most secret fantasies and thoughts! That is precisely what people too with the Blogs. Isn't it, well, too exhibitionist? Not to mention demeaning to their inner lives, which remain powerful and a source of inspiration when kept secret, but become inane when expressed -- the same way a bottle of Coca Cola will go flat a few hours after you open it.
That said, I am excited about the possibility of "publishing my life as a multidimensional, interactive online document". So, how to solve this paradox of wanting to pubish my life but to keep my life something which is secret and mysterious? My solution is called ANTIBLOGGING or STEALTH BLOGGING.
The concept is this: if you met someone interesting at a bar or had a crush on someone, you would try to find out as much as you could about them, but you wouldn't expect them to present you a complete autobiography of all the things they ever did and thought. In the same way, if you were in a conversation with some strangers at a party, you would probably be guarded about the kind of comments you would make, occasionally tell untruths, and generally try to make a good impression of yourself. It is what being sociable is all about. However, if you were to become friends with somebody there, over a long period of time, more intimate details of your life would begin to leak out. It is a process that would take years, and in the end, nobody can ever truly and totally understand another person -- or even themselves, for that matter.
Still, it is the drive to know and understand the other person that is the concept behind this website. Nothing will be laid out on the line, like washed laundry -- if you want to find the truth, you have to search for it. The presentation will be intuitive rather than logical. There will be no end and there was no beginning either, for that matter. It will be a relationship rather than a "confession". And it will force you, the reader, to interact not as a voyeur but as a partner, cohabitant, a co-creator. So welcome to the world of antiblogging.
What is AntiBlogging