understanding an audience

In questioning if i was a blogger, i started wondering about conceptions of audience in blogging.

Somewhere i once read that there are two types of bloggers. The first produces material in a journalist-esque fashion. They see their audience as public and are always a bit surprised when those close to them read their stuff. The second produces material in a journal fashion. They see their audience as private and are always a bit startled when the world reads them.

I’m definitely in both camps, or neither. My audience is primarily me. Even my best friend doesn’t read my blog. In fact, most of the people that i truly think of as only friends (and not also colleagues) never read my blog. I’m always absolutely surprised to go to a party and be told about my blog. I’m also surprised to hear from strangers about my blog.

What is an audience? So, while i say that my audience is me, that’s not really true. Most of the tone of this blog is veiled. It’s pretty non-controversial. It’s fairly boring. I don’t write about my adventures, my sinful engagements or my emotional trials. Sure, folks make guesses about me as a person based on my content, but that’s often misleading. For example, the reasons that i pay attention to drug and sex and teenager culture have quite rich explanations, but it’s easy to make assumptions. I allow that slippage though because i don’t want to appear so wholesome. Thus, the i know that the constructed identity is biased and i often encourage that bias

Audience is *so* essential. There is no way to present information without understanding who is reading it, what their biases/experiences are, and how you are being read. We write in a void, unlcear of how people are reading us. We write to the ether, yet i take for granted so many assumptions about my audience. I assume that i’m speaking to educated, conscientious people with like minds… i assume i’m preaching to the choir (but all readers of misbehaving will know that i’m learning this lesson the hard way).

In order to blog, we need to either define our audiences on our site (locally controlled context creation), be totally low self-monitors, or be really consciously uncontroversial. Usually, i tend towards the latter. I’m a complete high self-monitor and security through obscurity isn’t working… somehow, i stopped being obscure.

I worry about this aspect of blogging. Will bloggers just be the low self-monitors and those of us who don’t put our vulnerabilities forward? What’s the impact of putting your vulnerabilities forward. Have others gotten hurt?

Hmm…

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1 thought on “understanding an audience

  1. Irina

    darling, you are so far from obscure even without your blog that its no wonder your blog has generated an audience. Blogs are fundamentally statements – look at me and hear me. Some produce content that gets people thinking, that affects what they think about, that gives ideas. Those are valuable for creating a new kind of discourse, an impact that is larger and more dispersed than is possible through party conversations (although far less interactive and thus less flexible). Blogs that generate an audience are curious occurances but I am not sure surprise is in order in your case. Colors and idiosyncrasies aside, as someone who can effortlessly engage a relatively large group of people in a through provoking conversation in essentially any space, it isn’t surprising a similar thing happens here.

    love you all the more for that though 🙂 keep misbehaving darling.

    i.

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