I know this has been discussed many times in blogworld, but I was thinking recently about the versions of our lives we create via blogs. Some are relentlessly cheerful - I don't enjoy those, because, depending on my own mood, it makes me think my life is tedious/my spouse is the worst husband on earth/my children are insuffiently cute/talented/whatever or the blogger is insane/deluded/a pain in the arse. Some are stuck on whinge mode - I'm all for blog-as-vent, but not all the time. Some just provide TMI - there are details I do not want to know. About anyone.
The blogs I enjoy most tend to focus on the positive, but acknowledge that there are times when we all get tired, grumpy, frustrated and bored. Life is not perfect.
I try to use my blog to find small, interesting (to me, at least) things within my day-to-day existence. Sometimes it seems rather difficult, but I suppose that's the point.
So, I suppose, most blogs are both true and untrue - they're necessarily an edited version of life, skewed to whatever the blogger wants to express. All good.
I was thinking about it because I know someone - not a friend, but someone within our larger social circle - who has a very popular, high-traffic blog, where she writes about women's self-image, motherhood, celebrity and various other things. Her most popular posts are when she talks about the trials of motherhood, and she is very good at the 'Everywoman' tone, lamenting the lack of time off, the incessant demands, the general drudgery ...
Trouble is, I know these things: she has a full-time, live-in nanny and a housekeeper; her husband is a stay-at-home dad; she travels overseas at least twice a year (with nanny!) and has two holiday houses; she has an almost unlimited budget.
Ok, so I don't mind her wanting to connect with her readers by pretending her experience mirrors theirs. What bothers me slightly is that she makes money out of her blog - it's a business. Does this make it unethical or am I expecting too much?
Real people: May at the market
4 hours ago
8 comments:
That's a tough one. Does she present in her posts situations that are blatantly untrue (e.g. "I'm home alone with the kids every night")? Or does she just gloss over her circumstances? I can see wanting to connect with readers and their struggles, but I think when you present your blog as a representation of your life, you should be truthful to the best of your ability. I see no upside in the long-term to misrepresenting oneself, as the truth ultimately will out. (Like some of those "autobiographical" books that turned out to be mostly fiction.) People resent being played.
Thanks for your thoughts, Pseu. The thing that 'got' me was reading a post where this woman said she and her husband hadn't spent a night together away from the kids in two years and we had in fact recently all been for a weekend away in the country (sans kiddies) ... Not so much glossing over as telling a fib, in my book!
I have to say I'd feel really manipulated -- and patronized! -- if a blog offered me what seemed to be a mirror to my own struggles but turned out to have manufactured that reflection out of fictional elements.
My son has been interning with a Marketing Affiliations company, and it's disturbing the fictions that are contrived to develop audiences for online marketers -- the potential is certainly there for blogs to be used the same way, and your friend seems to be playing into that. Pretty cynical, it seems to me, to market her own life (or its representation, at least) that way.
Thanks, Mater, I have to agree with you about it being cynical, but I wondered if I was overreacting. A younger cousin of mine quoted this woman on her Facebook page, and I was SO tempted to send her a message saying 'don't believe everything you read'. I resisted the urge, but still ...
It feels wrong to me, too. Of course when we present ourselves to the public via a blog, we develop an image of ourselves that we want to share. By my lights, that image should be based in reality as far as possible.
If I knew this blogger IRL, I'd have a hard time with the discrepancy. I don't think you've overreacted at all.
Rubi, it's good to see that my fellow bloggers feel the same way ...
We all present only a partial view of ourselves through our blogs, but I think I would feel very manipulated and would in fact be angry, if I read this woman's blog and thought I had something in common with this woman and it turned out to be at least partially fictional if not entirely so.
I suppose if she makes money from the blog the whole thing can be seen as a form of marketing, but the whole thing seems very cynical and manipulative. I find it somewhat disturbing that someone is marketing what she purports to be her own life in this way, and it would definitely trouble my relationship with this person if I new her IRL.
Thanks Mardel. Yes, I have to say it has affected how I perceive her - not that we're friends, but we do come across each other socially, and I'm much less inclined to extend the acquaintance!
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