• Thu, 18 Jun 1998

From: Lohen Gryn <lohengryn@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 02:59:28 -1000

One question (maybe it has already been asked, but not in that way...?):

WHO reads your journal?

Do you have a "virtual audience" of readers who have (or have not) become known to you through the pages of your diary only?

Or do you know people (close friends, relatives...) who read your journal pages regularly - if this is the case: did you give them the URL, and WHY? did they find out by themselves, and WHAT were their reactions (and yours...)?

OK, it makes more than 1 question, but they are all closely related...

See also: Does your spouse/significant other know about your journal?

From: Renee <kat@intrstar.net>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 06:10:00 -1000

> Do you have a "virtual audience" of readers who have (or have not)
> become known to you through the pages of your diary only?

Most definitely, if it weren't for my journal I sure wouldn't be going to New Jersey for a wedding of a friend/journaler! I've "met" many people because of my journal and I count that as the being the best thing about keeping it online.

> OR: do you know people (close friends, relatives...) who read your
> journal pages regularly - if this is the case:

Yes. I gave them the url. Why? Because it doesn't really bother me too much that they read. They know me anyhow. The only ones that were reading that I really didn't want were my Bosses and that's because stupid me left my sig file in an email to them by mistake. Which is why I moved it recently. I had enough of worrying about what I'm writing. They don't know me as well and it's a bit uncomfortable.

From: Cory Glen <coryglen@juno.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 08:12:31 -1000

> WHO reads your journal?

circus freaks, or otherwise curious individuals

> Do you have a "virtual audience" of readers who have (or have not)
> become known to you through the pages of your diary only?

I didn't make my email address easy to find, but some people find it anyway and write me. I know some of them now, at least a little bit.

> OR: do you know people (close friends, relatives...) who read your
> journal pages regularly - if this is the case:

I think one of my nephews is reading, but I'm not sure. He told my brother I had a page online. Of course, I've moved my URL fairly frequently.

From: Al Schroeder <al.schroeder@nashville.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:22:22 -1000

At least half of my readers (and by far the most vocal) are other journallers. Others are old rivals, old friends, and people who found me from links in other journals.--Al.

From: JulieR <baubo@eskimo.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 15:59:10 -1000

I think the majority of the people who read my journal are probably from this list.

> OR: do you know people (close friends, relatives...) who read your
> journal pages regularly

The people I've known personally that read my journal include my mother and sisters, my boyfriend (we live in different states so this is one way of staying in touch), a couple of ex-es, and friends from the chorus I'm in.

> did you give them the URL, and WHY?

My family and boyfriend I gave the URL to, so they could read what's going on in my daily life as well as an occasional 'deep thought' (ha!) that rises to the surface of the mess that is my brain. Insights about me that they might not have otherwise had, even if it's just the realization that I like to write. As I'm the youngest in the family, I think it's my way of asserting to my family that I am, indeed, an adult.

Well, mostly.

Friends from chorus and my ex-es knew about my general personal pages from before I started the journal, and they've found the journal links since then.

> did they find out by themselves, and WHAT were their
> reactions (and yours...)?

I have two sister, one that's 7 yrs older, and one 6 yrs older. The one in the middle wrote me to tell me alllllll about how wrong I was about the essay I did on 'Living with Less Stuff'. That there's no way families have all that stuff that I list. She spent 3 emails arguing about it before I simply stopped emailing her back - she's too dense to understand what I was getting at. It wasn't worth arguing over.

My oldest sister and my mom seem to take it all in stride. My boyfriend likes hearing from me day to day, even if it is in a journal for everybody to read. (We do email and other stuff, too, of course.)

I occasionally get annoyed that I don't feel the freedom to bitch and moan about my family in my journal... but the truth is that, overall, there's not much for me to complain about when it comes to them. *shrug* My mom is pretty cool, my oldest sister is, too, and the middle sister is... well, just not worth stressing over, sister or not.

From: Tracing <alethea@ounce.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 16:06:45 -1000

I haven't counted but I'm pretty sure I have more non-journaler readers than journaler readers.

From: "A mob of angry bunnies =>(" <jgluck@primenet.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 16:19:51 -1000

A person in a class of mine last semester asked me for the URL for my webpage and ended up staying up all night reading my journal and its archives -- I never talked about him in it before, so there was nothing "incriminating" for him to find, but the next time I saw him in class, he began repeating stuff from my journal...

e.g. : I entered the room and took off my walkman and he says "Jessica never goes anywhere without her walkman."

Another person in the class got a little freaked out by this. It was a little odd for me, since he was the first person in the same town to read my journal (excluding myself). Some other classmates asked me about it yet didn't ask for the URL, so I suppose they were intrigued but just didn't want to know.

From: Tony Tang <ttang@intergate.bc.ca>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 16:39:55 -1000

Hey Folks,

Yes, something similar has happened to me, though it's happened in reasonably good contexts--none of that spooky-type stuff. What typically happens is that I try to attract new-found friends to check out my webpage (my thinking is that I should get at least one hit from the exchange--and yes, I am a "hit whore" <grin>).

At any rate, what's usually happened is one of two different things. The first is that the person gives the page a glance, maybe hits the "about me" page, gives it quick perusal, and that's about it.

What's happened a few times is that the person actually _does_ go through the pages and pages of stuff that's on the website. In every case (that I have known) the person and I have gotten to know one another really well in a short period of time, and have become really good friends.

I find this phenomenon rather interesting, but explainable. You'll notice that you become close friends once one of you shares some particularly traumatising or sensitive information to the other. In doing so, you implicitly state that you trust that person, and hence, you make that person think, "Wow, I'm cool." (In so many words.) And then you just "become" friends. It happens.

What's interesting is that the webpage/diary/journal performs essentially the exact same function, except that it removes the "having to actually speak" element.

Neat, huh?