This has become the "Real World"

This week, to advance our exploration of the rise of the blog, we read and discussed an article titled, “Blogging as a Social Action: A Genre Analysis of Writing,” by Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd. The article outlined the main points of blogs, such as their purpose in society, their “ancestors,” and reasons as to why they have become so popular.

What I found to be the most interesting aspect of the article is the term that the authors have coined as “mediated voyeurism.” The authors theorize that, especially in the 90’s, there comes about a “peculiar intersection of the public and private” spheres because, “…as people relinquish control over increasing amounts of personal information, they expect increasing access to information in return” (Miller et al.) With the rise of reality TV and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, society has become increasingly obsessed with knowing about the private lives of celebrities and “regular” people. The line between private and public information has not only been crossed, it has become extremely fuzzy. Today, thousands of people are willing to share very personal issues on TV (or just act completely ridiculous), as well as on their blog. As “regular” people are becoming “celebrities,” there is an ever-increasing demand for information to show how celebrities are regular people. And people, me included, can’t get enough of all of this “private” information. The list of reality shows and celebrity magazines that my friends and I can’t go a week with out seeing is a little embarrassing (we quote Vh1’s I Love New York on a daily basis).

One interesting point that was brought up in discussion was how, as a society, we are becoming more skeptical of what is considered “reality.” We know that what we see on The Bachelor or The Apprentice is not an adequate representation of real life, and what we read in magazine about celebrities is most likely not true. This is where I think the genre of weblogs is separating itself from the other types of media included in “mediated voyeurism” and “mediated exhibitionism.” (Miller et al). I’m going to ignore the example that was given in the article about the women who lied about the child with cancer, but I think that most people tell the truth when writing in a blog. I don’t think that blogging has really caught on yet with people my age, but I think that others blog so that they can share their thoughts. If they wanted to seek attention by fabricating stories they could just go on Real World or one of the other hundreds of reality shows.