Online Diaries

Online diaries are otherwise known as blogs, although these days, there are specific online diary sites which are a bit different from blogs, but you know what I mean?

Now, as far as I'm concerned, diaries are supposed to be secret, Bridget Jones taught us that one. In fact, they used to be so secret that big sisters went to great lengths to hide them from their younger siblings. . . If not, everything had to be written in code like in Mamma Mia, "we went to the beach at sunset and dot dot dot . . ." type of stuff, you know what I mean. Do you remember those with a little lock and key? Oh yeh, like that's gonna keep your 10 year old brother and his mates out! No wonder they were also hidden deep within the sock drawer or under the bed. Yes, you didn't think we knew your hidey place did you?

Anyway, these days online diaries are generally open to the whole world to read, well I think you can keep them private but most people choose to publish them to the whole world hiding behind the luxury of anonymity. After all, how many people will know the real "Foxy Lady" or "Silver Horse"? Even if they're your neighbor you probably wouldn't realize for a minute who you were reading about.

Why People Have Online Diaries

Working on the context that a worry shared is a worry halved, many people simply write their online diaries in order to get stuff off their chest or to answer lifes eternal problems - "he said he loved me then ran off with my best friend", "I'm 19 years old and weigh 200 pounds, shall I get my belly button pierced?" that sort of thing. Other people write their online diaries for the thrill of seeing themselves in "print". There's a kind of ego thing going on for them. The problem with online diaries is that not many people actually have anything interesting to say. Are they written on behalf of the writer, or of the reader?

People read them to get an insight into other peoples lives, maybe people who they consider to live a more exciting or glamorous life than they themselves have, in an exotic part of the world, or just another part of the country. They read them to escape from their own boring lives, only to find out that many of these "diarists" have boring lives too, which is why they spend so much time online writing their diaries and trying to make it sound interesting.

Gosh that sounds bad doesn't it? I'm really not against online diaries at all, in fact some of them are extremely entertaining and end up with a following of thousands of readers. Imagine having that many people interested in your life? We used to call them nosey parkers.