I recently got two e-mails from people talking about how they felt that they knew me and how that was a weird feeling.

Do you feel that you "know" the people whose online journals or sites you read? Do you think it's easy for some people to project ideals onto website hosts? Do you suspect that online journalers make themselves seem more likable than they really are?

Would you love to share your life with strangers? Do you hate the idea of strangers feeling familiar with you? Are online journalers crazy or what?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Answers

No, of course I don't know you. I know something and some things about you. Sometimes you've even chosen to reveal rather personal and intimate facts about yourself and your life. But I don't *know you*. I'm a firm believer in taking in the whole picture of a person in order to know her and part of that means plenty of real face to face time.

I've read a lot of another journaler's words, even conversed via email many more times and in much more depth and about many more secrets, but I don't really know her, either. I have an idea, a concept in my mind of her, but I can't get over the feeling that it's only a small facsimile of what her real life friends can conjure up when she's not around.

Definitely some people project onto website hosts what they want to believe is behind the curtain. It's not that different than the pictures you get in your heads of your favorite radio personalities. Yeah, I bet some people take it too far, though.

I don't read enough journals to have formed an opinion about whether most spiff up to make themselves more likeable or not. The main two I read seem to be very open, candid and honest. (That'd be you, Wen.)

Share my life with strangers? Yeah, I kinda want to, but I never do. Well, in one or two rare circumstances I have, and it's always worked out well. :-)

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

I'd never presume to know someone whom I hadn't met in person. Online you can get a feel for someone through their words but it's really just a silhouette. It's just too easy to presume and project, to fill in the details lacking with your own preferences.

As for sharing my life with strangers, I don't think I could stand to do so any more than I already do in this forum. I don't think I could maintain a readable tone if I journaled for an audience; I get entirely to self-absorbed and morose. And I really do have a problem with forced familiarity. I've mentioned this before: I wear a nametag at work and I can't stand it when people read it off my chest and call me by my name. Unless I've already introduced myself to you I find it really invasive and presumptuous. I can't imagine what it must be like to receive letters from people who feel as if they know me. I don't think I'd be as open as Gwen seems to be; I'd probably get creeped out pretty fast.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

who the hell are you, I don't know, but you seem to be a very interesting person who has more to her than meets the eye.

I know the personality I seem to present in my journal is just a fraction of what I really am...I don't show the stupid side of me...I hope....

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

Hi Gwen. I don't feel I really know you, but I have to admit you've been on my mind quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. I've found myself intrigued about your defection to Dallas (Dallas?), feeling oddly concerned for you and hoping all is well. I don't find these feelings of goodwill particularly unsettling; they are much like the feelings of concern I have at the moment for all those Russians trapped at the bottom of the sea in that submarine.

I don't have an online journal, but I do have a website where I publish quite a bit of semi-personal stuff on a particular subject that interests me. Any feedback I've gotten has been so warm and friendly and respectful that I've never felt weird about it. I guess I actually sort of feel about strangers much the same as I do about anyone else: I love finding a kinship with them, I enjoy lively chats and warm comraderie-- as long as they don't try to tell me what to do, manipulate me, or insult me.

That said, I'm sure not all online journalers are crazy; just the ones I enjoy reading! ;D

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

Gwen, of course I think I know you! and that you are standing right now in the kitchen in a purple T-shirt, is just that little bit of "stalker" icing. Of course my moods follow your every mood, my hairstyles follow yours, I ask myself "what would Gwen do" when confronted with any strange situation.

*** and of course, I am kidding!

To answer more sincerely, I go for the humor in online journals. I have corresponded with a few people, and am glad that it's worked out OK, but whether people are even writing truthful or honest stuff in their journals is not of real importance to me. If I laugh, and find it poignant, that's the super bonus that I feel lucky to get out of this (I feel) very unsteady platform that is the Internet.

I think I like your site Gwen, because I feel it does show a lot more sides to life than just making yourself look good (in fact you probably go the opposite way on that.) I think sharing the same sense of humor with people is a kind of intimate feeling. Maybe I do project some ideals on to journalers, but maybe not. I think my personal test for that is if I've ever been really shocked by something they've said. Then I feel I've had an unreal expectation of that person. --- whoa, this post sounds like a bunch of crap!

I guess the short answer is "who knows?" I'm along for the ride. I try to be pretty careful with info, but applaud those who let it all hang out a little more, and try to be respectful of those that take that risk.

Can you tell I just had a Diet Coke, and never drink caffeine? whoo hoo!!

Oh, Gwen if you are crazy for having a journal, I hope you never seek help. xoxo

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

Lisa, you crack my shit up! You said it! April, I'm with you, too. I was awful worried when Gwen ran away to Dallas, and I've also been fretting in the back of my mind about those poor Russian sailors at the botom of the ocean.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

Oh yeah baby, I know you. Seriously? I was a little weirded out when I met up with you because I felt privy to all of this information that I felt was somehow ill-gotten.

Like (and I know this is a shock) I'd been reading your journal.

Weird.

But then I got over it fast.

I've been having a kind of similar thing happening with a bb that I do some work on and post on quite often. The board was getting a little bogged down and in an effort to keep it smooth I got rid of a lot of the old posts. It was like finding old photos of myself. Only they didn't really seem like me. It was like finding really, really old photos of yourself and goling, "wow! I had forgotten my hair looked like that! I must have been the person to apply that copious black eye-liner to my own face! What was I thinking? Was I really that thin? Did I properly appreciate it? Am I properly appreciating this stage in my life? Who the hell am I?"

Needless to say, I'm a paper journal keeper and I toss most of the old ones. I don't need this kind of freaky experience every day.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

I just wanna quickly point out that I didn't necessarily mean t his topic in a specific way... I meant all readers' relationships with all online hosts... but I put "do you know me?" coz I figured it sounded all provocative and shit.

So far I haven't had many problems with people being too familiar or anything.

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2000

Hey Gwen, if you do have a problem with someone being weird, just let us know. We will form a human chain around you with a stalker- repellent force field. We will take our power bands and vaporize the thoughtless morons, to make the world safe for online journalers everywhere.

Tada!

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2000

gweni may be we can meat one day!!!

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2000

Gwen, I have enjoyed your site for several years. I particularly liked your piece about the Jehovah Witnesses. It made me laugh until I almost peed my pants. And I love your pictures. Didn't you say you had a new picture for us? I've never sent you an e-mail or posted on this forum before, but I find this an interesting topic and wanted to give you my input. I feel that I know you in the same way that I feel I know the characters in a good novel. A good writer can make you care about the people they write about. Sometimes I don't want a book to end because I will miss the characters. Same here; I think you make your readers care about what happens to you and miss you when you're not here. I think it is a gift that good writers have. Anyhow, that's my 2 cents. Linda

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2000

Nah, I don't know you Gwen. To tell you the thruth, you're really the only online journal I read anymore.(Except of course for Robot Frank) I love your work and your journal, and I feel I know a lot of shit about you and that I'd like to know you, but I don't know you. Cuz...I don't. *grin*

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2000

my post in the "tattoo you" forum refers to a friend, C, with whom I became slightly obsessed a couple years back. I met her via a mailing list, but since we lived in the same city, we decided to meet in person, and our friendship grew from there.
She has a pretty well-known online journal, and when we started hanging out, she told me about it, and warned that if I read it, to remember that the journal wasn't an accurate representation of who she is-- it's only the parts of her she has chosen to share with her readers. At the time I thought that was weird and kind of lame. Sure, I understand that there are boundaries to privacy, but she writes about INTIMATE shit on her site-- stuff I *might* consider telling my very closest friend-- that it seems bizarre and a little duplicitous to edit her writings so as to make herself come across as having a perfect life, and being Ms Upstanding Human Being. I feel like she edits to make herself look better, and it makes me squidgy. We're not close anymore in large part to the fact that after my initial Awe of her was rebuffed, and subsequently, faded, I started seeing her more clearly, and I stopped making excuses for her. I'm uncomfortable with a great many things about her-- decisions, lifestyle choices she's made, and even I guess what you'd call ethics-- and I just feel like we are pretty incompatible.

Sorry, that got off-topic. The point I wanted to make was that, when all I knew about her was her online personality/character, I thought she was The Shit, but after I got to really know her, in person, I was disappointed.

-- Anonymous, August 21, 2000

So many online journalers try to pound it into our heads that we'll never know who they really are, I've just accepted that we won't ever get the full story. When you read something they've put a lot of introspection into though, it's a bit magical. It's sort of like at a slumber party and the lights are out and everyone admits their biggest fears. The next morning when the lights come back on, you think you've found a piece of them to understand and it sometimes leads to a friendship.

Do I expect to have friendships with journalers who I email to when they've written something particularly intriguing or funny? No, but then again, sometimes it might be nice if it happened. I only read the journals of people who I think I would want to be friends with in a real life situation as it is.

When Gwen first did her pictures, I wrote and asked her if she had drawn pubes on one of the bodies, and then *my God*, I was so embarrassed that I would ask that and hated myself, so *then* I sent her an email apologizing for asking that, and of course, you know...Gwen was cool as usual. But I can see how some people might get carried away sometimes.

I've been keeping a journal for about 2 months now and I gave my boyfriend and my kids different names so that they still have their privacy. The other day, one of my friends who I gave the url to, ICQed my boyfriend and asked him if he knew I was seeing someone else (the moniker I had given my boyfriend). Doh! And it pissed me off and made me laugh at the same time. I thought that she knew me better than that.

I think in many ways online journalers attempt at first to appear more likeable for the simple reason that they want people to read them. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just human nature.

I'm glad I started writing my journal because I finally have a place where I can put all of my strange ideas and boring details of my life that I want to remember, that other people can read. I want people to read me and find a connection with what I mean. I'm a creepy gal who likes to swear like a sailor and talk about sex, and wouldn't you know, there's a few people out there who actually like to read my stuff. I'm constantly amazed by that.

Yep, I'm crazy. Just like you.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2000

"Nobody knows anybody...not really" YES! My God that felt good. I finally found a place to use one of my Miller's Crossing quotes. Geez. I feel tingly. Okay, I'm over it. Let me put it this way... if I were to see you on the street I wouldn't approach you. You're online doing your thing, and that's cool. I'm a writer, and God forbid anyone should ever tell me they know me from reading something I've written. Of course I write romance novels, so there's very little chance of my life sounding like my fiction.

Because I'm a freak.

I think there are journals out there that are like car accidents, where people give WAY too much away. There are things I wish I didn't know about my mother, for God's sake, so I definitely don't need to know that Sadie has been passing purple stools. But I also have to shrug and say, God bless Sadie. I hope that helped her. As for sharing my life with strangers, I have a hard enough time with my own damn family. But Gwen, I come back to your journal because it touches me. Not in a bad way. In a lyrical, real way. I read it as much for the poetry of daily life that's in it as I do to understand you as a person. I should stop... shades of War and Peace. Keep on keepin' on little lady!

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2000

Thanks, Shannon. And "ha!"

But tell us what you've written. Maybe you have some fans here. Or just tell us your sub-genre, if you want to retain some anonymity.

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2000

I have found that the best way to remain anonymous is to go unpublished... so that's what I've been doing. Actually, I just finished my second manuscript and am submitting both books to editors for the first time. I have a phobia about the whole publishing thing, but my husband said either submit or be locked out of my basement haven... so I'm submitting. Everyone I've sent queries to has asked for the manuscript(s), but I am ever on the alert for failure.

I write contemporary, because there is no way in hell I could compete with your style of double o fresh writing... Cracked my shit up when I read that... Where was I? Oh yeah, droning on and on about me! I'm going to my first romance conference up here in Seattle in October and I'm already having palpitations. Three days in a hotel with the ladies of love... I quit a low paying job as a librarian so that I would have more time to write, and ended up starting my own cleaning business. From cataloging to troubleshooting toilet rings. I question my sanity sometimes. If I should ever be unleashed on the romance world, I'll send you the titles.

I should get so lucky...

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2000

Good luck. Don't be nervous. I'm sure you'll be published.

Did you ever read that book by Sarah Bird -- what was it called? The Boyfriend School... shit. Something. Well, it was about a photojournalist who went to cover a romance writers' conference, and then tried to write her own novel. It was really good, in a light/non-super-literary way.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2000