Blogging as Universal Self-Exposure: Is It Worth the Risk?
"by the way, I was reading your blog the other day, and you say..." the interviewer, whom I met for the very first time a little more than an hour ago, inserted the comment in the most casual fashion as he went on to question my view toward Asia's economic future. As calmly as I received the statement as nothing but the continuation of the discussion we have been having for a while now to gauge my background and interest for the job, I cannot help but be slightly surprised.
This blog, as the product of my pure hobby of opinionated writing, for all its apparent bias, lack of formal structure, and full of grammatical errors, have become taken so seriously as to become a part of judgmental criteria for who I am, how I think, and what my views are toward contemporary issues across the world and around my daily life. For something that is openly accessible and searchable on the Internet, I suppose for complete strangers to access its content is no doubt unavoidable.
But, at the same time, what does that "open access" mean for the blog itself is a completely different matter. First, the very purpose of the blog's existence is for the identification of the writer as a unique individual, with unique views, thoughts, and viewpoints. To make the point clear about the individuality of the writer, he or she, on certain issues or opinions, must somehow make the words and views stand out from the general crowd.
Perhaps passion in writing, combined with beautiful storytelling and prose, may suffice to distinguish one blogger from the millions out there, each armed with their own attempts at literary independence and style. But obviously, most bloggers are not even close to being at that stage, or will they ever reach that stage. Most are simple amateurs, with mediocre writing skills. In that is not the case, all bloggers would be professional journalists by now.
Without the superhuman writing abilities, the writer has nowhere to turn to besides generating unique personal viewpoints, something that has surely not been lacking within this blog, particularly with regard to issues of working for corporate Japan that the interviewer picked up in their brief examination of its contents. In these personal opinions, surely some are perfectly valid from firsthand experiences, observations, or even secondhand accounts.
Yet, just as surely, some are bound to be pure sensationalizing of petty issues, or grave exaggeration of the positives, or more likely, negatives of particular situations, designed and written for the very reason of attracting more readers. It is not 100% the writer's fault that the words are inadvertently structured in ways that incite strong passions from the readers, who would then proceed to distort the original meaning of such words to justify their irrational passions.
Thus, for the sake of upholding the very logical and sensible nature of his or her own opinions, the blogger faces serious constraints in writing. The more he or she thinks about how the Internet-surfing, blog-reading audience perceive the "creatively generated" contents of the blog, the more he or she gets, at least mentally, the incentive to self-censor the blog posts before they are published and possible to be searched and spread across cyberspace.
Given the amount of energy needed for such careful wording and self-screening, not to mention how much such a process takes the very fun and entertaining nature out of blogging itself, one wonders if it is indeed worth it. Sure, some employers are not going to like 100% of the views presented in a blog, but one has to realize that those views are genuine and will come out, sooner or later, in its most original uncensored fashion. To have them exposed in public sure the heck is much worse than just letting them out naturally on cyber-paper.
This blog, as the product of my pure hobby of opinionated writing, for all its apparent bias, lack of formal structure, and full of grammatical errors, have become taken so seriously as to become a part of judgmental criteria for who I am, how I think, and what my views are toward contemporary issues across the world and around my daily life. For something that is openly accessible and searchable on the Internet, I suppose for complete strangers to access its content is no doubt unavoidable.
But, at the same time, what does that "open access" mean for the blog itself is a completely different matter. First, the very purpose of the blog's existence is for the identification of the writer as a unique individual, with unique views, thoughts, and viewpoints. To make the point clear about the individuality of the writer, he or she, on certain issues or opinions, must somehow make the words and views stand out from the general crowd.
Perhaps passion in writing, combined with beautiful storytelling and prose, may suffice to distinguish one blogger from the millions out there, each armed with their own attempts at literary independence and style. But obviously, most bloggers are not even close to being at that stage, or will they ever reach that stage. Most are simple amateurs, with mediocre writing skills. In that is not the case, all bloggers would be professional journalists by now.
Without the superhuman writing abilities, the writer has nowhere to turn to besides generating unique personal viewpoints, something that has surely not been lacking within this blog, particularly with regard to issues of working for corporate Japan that the interviewer picked up in their brief examination of its contents. In these personal opinions, surely some are perfectly valid from firsthand experiences, observations, or even secondhand accounts.
Yet, just as surely, some are bound to be pure sensationalizing of petty issues, or grave exaggeration of the positives, or more likely, negatives of particular situations, designed and written for the very reason of attracting more readers. It is not 100% the writer's fault that the words are inadvertently structured in ways that incite strong passions from the readers, who would then proceed to distort the original meaning of such words to justify their irrational passions.
Thus, for the sake of upholding the very logical and sensible nature of his or her own opinions, the blogger faces serious constraints in writing. The more he or she thinks about how the Internet-surfing, blog-reading audience perceive the "creatively generated" contents of the blog, the more he or she gets, at least mentally, the incentive to self-censor the blog posts before they are published and possible to be searched and spread across cyberspace.
Given the amount of energy needed for such careful wording and self-screening, not to mention how much such a process takes the very fun and entertaining nature out of blogging itself, one wonders if it is indeed worth it. Sure, some employers are not going to like 100% of the views presented in a blog, but one has to realize that those views are genuine and will come out, sooner or later, in its most original uncensored fashion. To have them exposed in public sure the heck is much worse than just letting them out naturally on cyber-paper.
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