Wednesday, December 22, 2004

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a blog





Once in a while I fantasize about inventing a fictional character and blogging as an imaginary persona. Why be myself all the time?



I could be a frum mother of four coping with her recent extramarital affair!



Or a hassid who is secretly an atheist!



Or a rabbi's wife frustrated with the "rebbetzin" stereotypes!



Or a frum actress who dreams of being a historian!



Or a Jerusalem-based nursing student who's never seen a Star Wars movie!



Or a religious Zionist American-Israeli politically-conservative software engineer! (Oh, that's me. No, too boring to be fictional. Why do I waste my time?)



Am I the only one who sometimes suspects that not everyone in our little Jewish blogoshtetl is for real?



The possibilities make my head spin. (Or maybe it's just dehydration. The fast ends in 20 minutes.)

6 comments:

Anshel's Wife said...

This is the first time I've been here. I've heard about you. Very cute post. Interesting topic. I wonder if any research has been done on it. People making up identities. Blogging is a game to some people.

Zman Biur said...

Welcome. Thanks for stopping by.

Don't know how you can do research on whether people are fictionalizing their blog identities, though. Wouldn't they just deny it?

TRW said...

I would tell you to contact all the bloggers that know me in person, but then again, you'd think that they were lying too...inerestin' thought tho.;)

Zman Biur said...

TRW,

Nothing personal, of course. I'm sure you're real! It's all those others who might be fakes.

Or was it the other way around?

Jack said...

That is a cool cartoon, very funny and I suspect very true.

Zman Biur said...

It's a well-known, classic New Yorker cartoon from 1993, the early days of the web.

When you say it's "very true", I assume you mean many Internet users are actually canines? Or have I misunderstood?