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The entire blogging idea is a new concept.

When I was young people kept diaries, today they blog.

Two years ago when I heard about blogging I was shocked.  I kept asking myself what make people love the idea of posting the most intimate events in their life on a public website where everyone can see it?

When we were young our diaries were the ultimate secret garden that we hide from everyone.  Some diaries have locks and codes so no one can open and read them.  The most traumatic events in one’s life would be when the mom or someone close to you read your dairy.  But obviously not anymore since people start blogging.

Or is it?  Is blogging like writing a diary? not exactly.

In your diary you put your naked feeling, no matter how raw and primitive they are, but, in your blog you embellish your world.

Diary vs Blogging is like the Moi and the Surmoi.

For example you can write in your diary: “my ex-boyfriend still doesn’t love me: maybe because I am fat and wear bracelet.”  But in your blog you describe yourself as being not less than America Ferrera who is playing the character of Ugly Betty.  Knowing that one day she will take off her bracelet and straighten her hair to unravel a beautiful sexy lady.  So in your blog you don’t have to face the bitter reality of who you really are, and you can let your imagination create the best picture of you.

In your diary you can get angry and show your dark side without worrying of being judge.  So you can say: “Yesterday I was so angry at him, I wanted to see him suffering”.  But instead you just play the victim on your blog and gain everybody’s sympathy.

Freud once said that the psychoses started emerging in our society when humans started censoring their feelings.  I guess he meant when we became civilized.  I don’t have a major in psychology but I think this is what he meant.  Anyway, where I am going from here is, if your diary is your real you and help you externalize your true feelings, blogging is the opposite.

The danger of blogging is living in a virtual world where bad situation become adventures and sad story become a funny entertaining joke.

Another kind of blogging, and the most successful ones currently on the internet, are the one where people write not about themselves or their experience but about other people’s life.

Those blogs are nothing but gossip blogs (just like Gossip Girl).  Those bloggers build their fame on other people’s misery and by doing so they feel good about themselves.  Like the curious case of Perez Hitlon .

Blogs can be good for you too, they can have healing effects and make you feel good about yourself.  Like Zen Habits .

Other blogs about health issues or diet can bring hope and strength to the bloggers, and also to the one who read them.  Like cancer survivors blogs.

Some blogs can help rebuild your self-esteem, and push you to accomplish more than you thought you were capable of.

Blogs can be political, and bring you the latest news faster than any newspaper, for cheaper costs.  Huffington Post and Politico are the excellent two examples of political blogs.   According to Paid Content’s website Politico made $20 million in revenues in 2009 and $15 to $17 million for Huffington post .

So why not to blog?

The questions remain: what makes people so crazy and addicted to reading blogs.  Question I will try to brainstorm on in my next post.

Talk to you later.