No matter how much the schedule gets shifted, I still find myself at school for at least 12 hours straight on Thursdays. It's like an inescapable vortex of time consumption.
I should discuss topics, right? Share opinions of things I care about? This isn't LiveJournal, after all. Is that even still around? The life-cycle of those sites is about 5 years until they cease to be relevant in the mind's of internet goers. Just look at Myspace. Or Friendster. Or Xanga. Shit, I'm probably too late in the blog game myself. Blogspot will be over-taken in popularity by Blogstop.com or Blogcentral.org in a matter of months.
So I have a few hits on here, 103 to be exact, 50 of those are probably mine. I know a few friends have seen this but I suspect one or two people whom I don't know have perused through here. I find that utterly fascinating. Without even introducing myself, even in a non-formal, internet kind of way, I have given them a first impression of myself. And regardless how they feel about me, they do indeed form an opinion. It's like celebrity stalkers, who form an imaginary relationship with a person they've never met in any way, but instead gauge their personality and what they are like by interviews and appearances.
There was a dispute a few months back about a blogger who posted movie reviews and it turned out he plagiarized 90% of them. Stole them out of small newspaper publications and only ever changed small details and sentences, not even enough to convincingly make them his own. He was sued, and his blog was taken down. It's fascinating to think about because it makes sense for a person to plagiarize a book report on Atlas Shrugged because A.) It's 1500 pages long and B.) Ayn Rand is a terrible writer and her ideas are bullshit. But how hard is it to pay $10 ($7.50 for a matinee), sit down and watch the movie yourself then go write your opinion? Even if you can't really critique it as well as professional movie critics, how much of a burden is it to just write it out and do the very simple leg-work?
I mean, I get it, he wanted people to believe he was an expert on movies and get respect for that, but in an age when it's so easy to pretend to be someone different on the internet it's far more of a commodity to just be yourself. And honestly, real movie-goers don't want to read a professional critique of a film they're interested in, they want someone relate-able who's just like them to give them the skinny. I don't give a shit what Roger Ebert thinks about District 9 (amazing film), but I do want to know what my friends think. Why? Because we can talk about it. I can't call up Roger Ebert to debate films with him, or even email him for that matter.
I guess my point is that there is no point. The internet is a safe haven for the self-conscious to build a better version of themselves. Is it worth it? You tell me. The way I see it, if it's so hard being yourself, how much easier will it be to uphold the illusion of a different you? That blogger lost thousands of dollars and his reputation just because he felt other people's words were better than his own.Seems like a pretty hefty price to pay when he could've just gone to the movies at his leisure and blogged about his cats or something instead.
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