Blogging is Dirty

I've noticed to, conflicting trends over the past two decades.

The first is a direct result of mass-communication becoming more wide-spread: we are exposed to the best of the best, and next year, it'll be better. Most recent incarnations of this include American Idol. Any of the people in this season are better than any singer you'll ever personally know, and yet we all feel entitled to say that they suck. We compare everything to the elite model.

Models: there's another example. Actresses (men are, for the most part, exempt, but we'll go into that another day) are all gorgeous. Better-looking than anyone you'll ever know.

Politicians. We won't even consider them unless they appear to be super-humanly squeaky-clean. If you pick your nose in public just once, you'll never win another election.

The inverse also applies, here: talk-shows are happy to expose the worst of the worst of humanity. I won't give examples, but you know what I mean.

At the same time, there is a second trend. And it moves in the opposite direction: we bloggers air our dirty laundry. We take pictures of themselves in the most unflattering states and post them online. We talk about our debt. We share our personal dramas no Live Journal. This is abject reality. It's ugly.

What strikes me as interesting is that it is unlikely that the two can ever meet. Angelina Jolie can't post pictures of herself at 6:00 in the morning. Obama can't blog about how much his coworkers pissed him off. PZ can never run for office. The kids who sing on You Tube will never appear on American Idol.

I don't know what it means. I'm just watching it happen.