Social Interaction on Blogs

[gothtigger]

This is the second of a series of blog posts I started typing.  But it wants to be published first :)

What about social interactions that are not with friends?  But more acquaintances or in a blog network?  How does social interaction work here?

Comments

I observe but I do not interact

[penguin2]

Given that I'm not part of any standard human socialisation-profile groups, I probably can't shed any useful light here for you. But since you and M. L'ourse are two of the very few reasons why I still maintain this LJ account, I'll share a few thoughts :-)

In case you didn't already know, I came to LJ under duress. I already had all the interaction with relative strangers I had any use for (via my one and only interactive community, namely a closed-membership email-based discussion group), but a RL someone I privately referred to as the Duty Friend I have to stay sweet with because it knows where the bodies are buried** dragged me on to LJ so I could read its locked-post whinges - and once I got on, I discovered that most of my other RL friends were already on LJ and had been for some time, so I stayed.

My own reasons for posting in a personal blog are 1) to share information I find interesting, 2) to rant about humaninanity in general or in specific, or 3) to request information from a wider humanoid database. I'm not looking for validation, nor was I before I joined the blogosphere.

My attitude to blogging and blog interaction is, again, the same as my attitude to the wider world: I have no respect or tolerance for the dissenting opinions of strangers (unless it's career-related and I'm wearing the necessary mask, in which case I fake it like a master) - the best they can do is amuse me or pass on useful information. I have little respect for the opinions of even my closest RL friends unless they agree with me, but because they're dear to me I indulge them with get-out-of cards so long as their transgressions don't outweigh their usefulness (this latter situation hardly ever happens, because when I promise to share a piece of my heart I take that promise very, very, very seriously). Most of all, I adhere to this rule when out in the public parts of the internet: OBSERVE BUT DO NOT INTERACT.

I form my opinions by the suck-and-see method - I take in information and make up my own mind. Significant new information can and sometimes does cause me to change my mind...but so far, I've yet to come across any supposedly reasoned argument from strangers on the internet that contained sufficient logic to move me. So I don't interact. Especially as the very few experiments I've made in venturing a comment in Strangerville unearthed wankers with twisted 'logic' and opinions worth nowt but to serve as a justification for assault with a clue-by-four.

Nuff said :D

**Interestingly, after years of stressful-for-me fakery, said Duty Friend underwent a massive burst of personal evolution and the friendship became realer from my end because I no longer need to fake or fear. Yay!