Anonymous Blogging Friends

Today I did something that I'd never done before. I posted a comment onto a blog of a person who I only sort of know, and really, only in a six degrees of separation kinda way. And it was weird, you know? I mean, I've been surfing blogs for ages, reading the deepest thoughts and fears of people from Seattle to Copenhagen and back. And there are total strangers out there right now reading this (I like to think so anyway), who think nothing of the fact that they don't know me from Adam, but if they're regulars they know things like my age, my roommates' names, and even that my waist is larger than 34. Who knows, I could be reading sites posted by the very strangers who peruse my blog. And that's cool with me. The chance of meeting them is quite small, and thus I go on reading and posting and all is well.

Until this morning.

On any given day I either read the blogs of my best good friends or the aforementioned total strangers. An exercise in extremities, I relish in the musings of my closest pals, comment on their lives when I feel the urge to pass along great wit and wisdom via the keyboard, and at the same time, I enjoy the voyeuristic aspects of reading about someone I will probably never meet and then clicking away to another random blog without leaving any trace that I was there (I assume this happens all the time with my blog which is why the virtual exhibitionist that I am put up the picture border -- in case all those strangers needed more to sate them). But through all of this, I never before dabbled in that muddy, gray-area -- blogs of people I know, but that I don't know. You know? No. Okay...

These are the people who for some reason, I've seen, or heck, even met once (sometimes even more than once). Maybe we exchanged pleasantries at a party or at the theater. Perhaps we share a mutual friend, though we ourselves would be hard-pressed to recognize each other on the street (and even if we did, we would fall into that category of people who see the six-degree friends of their other friends and quickly avoid them as the anxiety over how to greet someone who's in the weird zone of more than a stranger but less than an acquaintance riddles us with a cold sweat akin to stagefright). It is that select group of people to which I refer.

Linking from the comment pages of my closest pals, I suddenly entered the gray area. Each blog was from someone I sort of knew and thus it felt odd to sit a spell and read about their days, their loves, their dreams, etc., and then click away. Because these are people I may actually run into, talk to, and with whom one day I may become good friends (theatre in Columbus - not that big a world). It vexes me a skosh to think I could run into one of these fine quasi-strangers and upon meeting them not need to ask how they are because I already know. What if it were the other way around and one of these local quasi-strangers has been a loyal reader of your blog? Wouldn't that strike you as a bit...disturbing? Try this on:

Quasi-Stranger: Hey, don't I know you from...
You: ...[insert mutual friend's name]'s party...yeah, I thought that was you. How are you?
Quasi-Stranger: Good, good. Hey, listen, sorry to hear about [insert sympathy inducing occurrence]; you shouldn't worry about it. Things tend to work out.
You: How did you know about [insert sympathy inducing occurrence]? Did [mutual friend] tell you?
Quasi-Stranger: No. Been keepin' up with your blog. Yo, love the [new addition to page]. Whatever happened with the [subject of post from three weeks ago]?

And there it is -- the sudden, horrific, realization that someone who you knew only as a friend of [mutual friend]'s is a regular on your site and they never told you. Suddenly you feel like you've shown up to school and there's a pop quiz and you're naked. And it's not a nightmare. This person suddenly knows all about you and what do you know about them? Nothing (unless your mutual friend is a walking tabloid). It was so much easier when everyone reading was either a complete stranger or a best friend. Even playing field. Turns out, not so much.

In reading the blogs of people I-know-but-don't-know and eavesdropping on their commented conversations, I noticed that I was making more mental notes than per usual. Normally, I read a random blog from some random person from God knows where and it entertains me (hopefully) and then I forget it. But with these people, I didn't forget. The fact that I sort of knew them made me pay attention. On the surface, it's just a comment, a picture, a profile -- but soon curiosity takes hold and there's so much more the farther down you go. So I'll read every post I can click to. And now I know more. So if I ever run into them -- and again, Columbus theatre scene...this is a likely happenstance -- it will feel like I know them more than I do, like we're friends even though we're not. That's just asking for trouble.

So, in an effort to prevent the awkwardness that may stem from an exchange similar to the one posted above, I've decided that I should let people know I'm reading -- that I'm there. That's why I posted a comment on the page of a friend of a friend who still may have little clue as to who I am. But this way, they at least know that the quasi-stranger is becoming their quasi-friend, whether or not they intended it to happen, and they in turn can check out my blog and we can become this strange new faction of 21st century society - what I call the ABF: Anonymous Blogging Friends.

Think about it: you can now go a lifetime getting to know someone via their blog just as they get to know you -- and maybe it's on purpose, a blogging pen pal of sorts. But maybe you just watch their blog and they don't even know it and you're fine with that. A new post comes out and you devour it up. It's not to you, but you're allowed to read. And if the posts dry up, you're lost. The other day, I found the blog of some housewife in suburbia who liked to cuss and write about shocking things to make her 9-5 a little less dull; and on that particular day she was lamenting the closing of another blog -- an anonymous blogging friend -- that she read all the time. She identified with this other woman and seemed heartbroken that the "friendship" was cut short. It was like she was actually mourning a loss. The other woman, her "friend", was fine. No tragedy had befallen her. I checked out her last entry and it just said she was too busy and couldn't keep up the posting and that she had moved on. And that was that. Makes you wonder how many people are out there right now identifying with your words, your struggles, your life....hmmm.

How's the weather in Seattle? Copenhagen?

If you're there, let me know.