Who is the real blogging you?

So continues the discussion of who the blogger is. If you really care to read my previous thoughts on this subject, go to the right of this page, scroll down and click on the label that says "blogging." Most likely, you will have to search the 2006-2008 archives, which I have no ambition to do, so I assume neither will anyone else.

I maintain that a blog shows only a portion of a person and often, not even the real person. Bloggers are often just writers expressing thoughts, moods, philosophy and anything else that interests them at the time. But the blogger is not the person--s/he is the blogger.

What's interesting is that bloggers who post under a different name are rarely confused with the actual person behind the postings. It's only we bloggers who use our own names that become associated with our blogs and not our true, full personhood.

As a writer, I find this discouraging. It's like the reader who always confuses the narrator with the story or poem author. While there is truth in fiction, poetry and blogging, there is only part of the complex thing we call personality, as someone put it, a "caricature."

Especially as bloggers, it's what we do outside of our blogs that is important.

Blogs are exercises in free speech and expression. They have turned the Internet into a wide world of the written word and by themselves, do not have the ability to expose any full truth about an issue, the author or the commentators. Even the most vile blogs do not reveal an absolute truth about anyone.

When bloggers come out of the blogosphere and even out of the worlds of email and creative writing, their truer personality and beliefs emerge. How do bloggers act in the real world? What do they publicly and privately endorse? How do they treat one another? What do they do with their free time? What do they stand for and why? These are the questions readers should always ask themselves.

To confuse the blogger with the real person is a logical fallacy. For example, when bloggers rant and rave, rage against the machine, fictionalize their lives and the lives of others, readers are getting no better picture of the author than if the author were writing creative nonfiction, fiction, drama or poetry.

The real question is, how would the author address an issue or a person in real life? How would the blogger approach situations discussed in blogs? What tone of voice would they use? What language would they use? Do they use different language when they are angry compared to when they are calm? Do they communicate their ideas differently? Are they as emotional or hasty or mean spirited or spiritual or loving or anything else that they are on their blogs? There is not way of telling without knowing the blogger him/herself.

We all have various manifestations of our personalities. Bloggers are no different. Professional writers and/or creative writers have even a bigger burden because they translate reality into their personal artistic expressions. Most blog readers and many readers in general do not see the person behind the writing.

So who are we, we bloggers?

If you really want to know, get to know one personally or at least examine his/her public life.

Otherwise, you probably are making invalid assumptions.