Self-Love Is Good

As I was sitting in a doctor's office yesterday, I started to read this article from New York Magazine about internet culture among young people. I was interested in it's discussion about how young people live their lives on the internet to the extent that there is essentially no privacy anymore. In addition to trying to understand why this phenomena is occurring, the author also discusses the generational gap in understanding the desire to document one's life for all to see. It is really funny how a lot of the "older generation" doesn't understand this desire. I'm not sure I agree with the author in her assertion that this hasn't been seen since the rock and roll era, but still, I agree that there are similarities.

I mean, why do most of us have this drive to live a large part of our lives online, documenting everything with blogs, pictures, videos and such? I think the myspace thing is really crazy. I must say that I've never really understood the appeal of "internet friends." I guess it's always been hard enough for me to make real friends and part of me feels like internet friends are kindof a cop out. I do, however, like using facebook and such sites to keep up with my friends even if I haven't talked to them in a long time. I am admittedly (and perhaps notoriously) bad at keeping in touch with people and I prefer to talk online and through text messages than actually on the phone, so I guess I am part of this online generation.

All this made me think about my own desire to blog. Where does it come from? I suppose it essentially boils down to blind narcissism since I'm sure I don't really have that many regular readers and I really am just doing this for those few who actually read and/or myself. However, in my mind, having a blog also lends my thoughts and opinions some sort of legitimacy. I've discussed with some people before how I have this desire to have pieces of my life documented in order to grant it legitimacy. I guess that blogging, in a way, is a shortcut to this. Instead of waiting around hoping that someone will document my life, I'm taking control and doing it myself.

I mean, I would really like to have a large readership of this blog, but for the moment, I'm content to just putting it out there into the world. I need to think some more about what the motivation is...this whole "New Journalism" and "Internet Generation" is really fascinating to me. Though, MySpace still really freaks me out.