"A Blank Slate"

A quote in a recent NY Times article: " ...[a blog] is a blank slate to unload all the frustrations and emotions of a personal crisis."

According to the article, one in ten American adults with Internet access keeps a blog, mostly about their personal lives. According to the same article, divorce is pretty up there as far a hot topics in blogs are concerned. A blogger named Tricia Walsh Smith put an absolutely ridiculous video on YouTube as part of her blog, to expose her soon-to-be-ex husband's shortcomings. Apparently, blogging can be therapeutic, especially if the blog is meant to embarass or disgrace someone else. If you really want to reach a large audience, a blog really has no boundaries or privacy and can make a person as anonymous or infamous as they want to be.

An interesting point brought up in the article was a blogger's First Amendment right. A recently divorced woman profiled linked podcasts to her blog that also made derogatory remarks about her ex husband. The man ended up suing her for "offensive remakrs", but the Supreme Court of New York said the podcasts were protected by the First Amendment and did not have to be blocked.

I think part of the reason people blog is that they simply want their stories to be heard and want to be acknowledged, if only by one other person. For highly personal matters like divorce, it seems that a private diary might be more in order if someone really needs to write down their feelings. But...in an age where everyone's dirty laundry is aired, I doubt a diary is going to replace a juicy blog posting about a nasty divorce.