Reality Blogs

Earlier this evening I had a conversation with my 17 year old cousin in San Diego, trying to convince him the intrinsic worth of blogs. This was his response - "You're a loser". Mind you, this was said in jest of course. But it really got me into thinking. Why are we "losers" so obsessed with reading other people's web logs? Individuals who are literally strangers to us? I have a number of blogs that I follow almost religiously (yeah....sad, I know), it's like this twisted addiction where I literally cannot stop. As I was ruminating over this obsession with reading blogs, I had what some would say a "light bulb" moment. This fascination that we have with pouring over pages and pages of blogs can be likened to the reality tv show craze. I mean, think about it. Reality TV pretty much speaks for itself because these shows are designed to convey "real life". But of course we know all about the "magical edit" buttons that the producers of these shows like to toy with. ;) These shows bring us to a new level which allows us to satiate our voyeuristic tendencies which society would normally restrict us. C'mon now, there is no doubt in my mind that we have all at one point had that draw to peer into our neighbor's window (especially if that window was at level with your window), to see what they were up to. However in some cases we don't have a choice BUT to peer through that window. We once had a neighbor who we dubbed "weird naked girl", (kind of like that guy in Friends, whom all the friends dubbed "Ugly Naked Guy") because she had this penchant for prancing around in her birthday suit for all to see. Although, I think I'll talk about that in another entry before I seriously digress. I really believe that blogs provide this same sense of being "in the know", but the difference is, blogs divulge more than what is actually being depicted. Blogs allows us to peer into the thoughts and true feelings of an individual. Now I don't know which is more daunting: this penchant that we have to satisfy our curiosity or this fascination that we have with reading about someone else's actual thoughts.