Last night, for the second Friday in a row, my blog disappeared – just upped and vanished. And again, in a state of near panic, I had to turn to my blog friends for help.
‘Blog friends’ reminds me of the time a friend at the LSE presented a proposal for her dissertation on something about investigating the nature of online communities (I don’t remember the specifics now) – and her supervisor categorically said, there can be no community in virtual space. He was of the belief that for a community to form and thrive, there was a need for real presence. The professor is a renowned anthropologist – he can talk for hours on his other pet topic GM Foods – but I cannot stress how much he was mistaken in this regard…
I instinctively knew that all it took for a ‘community’ to exist was shared experience – of some sort – I could not explain this to anyone then – but then I had had little exposure to any form of online interaction then – except for IM exchanges with friends.
Seems to me now (and increasingly to my husband) that I have no “real life” friends any more! But I am not complaining – while I wrote to my blog host vesana (and am still waiting for a reply from them), I had live support – at 11.45 in the night from friends I have never met – Ashwini somewhere in Canada and Sameer right here in Bombay – thanks guys – what will I do without you?
And it is not without reason that I have repeatedly called Sameer the ceramides of this Sunsilk blog! I damage and he repairs.
Blogging has brought me in touch with so many new voices – not always the faces that go with them – and sometimes that too. Either ways, there are lots of very nice people out there… and it has been a fun ride all the way…
I too have a similar feeling. I term to Blog friends for trouble shooting and also to get other inputs. I have even started talking to some of them over Skype.
I dont quite know how to put it but your analysis was brilliant.
Blog is the only place where i have fun.
Life wihout blogs is a scary thought
kaps, I know what you mean – but I don’t just turn to blog friends for blog troubleshooting alone but for general gyan and company as well:)
Prabhu, thanks. I don’t know about scary but life without blogs would be certainly a duller world… it i so addictive
Blogs provide an opportunity even for people who are generally shy to express themselves. Its like how the nerds took to computers couple of decades back, now many are taking to blogs.
IM is also another good medium though its P2P instead of multicast.
Charu,
I think there is some problem in your site – my comments are instantaneously getting published without being classified as spam 😉