I've been a member of metafilter since September 8, 2000.

It appears I have posted twenty-five comments, more than half of which are replies to the one link I posted. One could easily deduce that I'm not an active member of the site.

The fact is I read the site almost daily and, often, several times a day. And I don't just use it for the links; I read the comments, I look at the links. At times, I even print out some of the more interesting conversations so I can read and think on the subway home.

While reading the interesting goings on at metafilter tonight, I realized what I love about the site so much. I'm the sort of person who likes to people-watch. I can sit for hours and observe the people passing by and I also love making new friends, finding about their ideas and thoughts. Metafilter gives me the luxury of both without having to leave the comforts of my home.

I like to be able to click on a topic on a controversial issue and see tens of viewpoints and at least a few well thought out opposing arguments. I like the wide range of its members. Geographically. In age. In background. In priorities. In just about every which way. It's the kind of varying audience that would be almost impossible to arrange in real life. Talk about getting to do some quality people watching.

I read about all these people getting fed up/frustrated/emotional about the changes in the site and making their dramatic exits and it makes me ponder. I've observed all the changes in the site too and there are days I get annoyed because there are too many links and not enough quality conversation. There are days I feel like it's all crap. But then a neat topic starts up and I remember how much I love it.

I guess a people watcher never really gets emotional cause she's observing and not really an active part of the crowd and hence feels less of a sense of belonging. Hence less of the sense of loss.

Or so one would think.

All I can say is that if Metafilter disappeared tomorrow, I would be really really sad. And if I can feel this way as a member who mostly watches from afar, I can only imagine the sorrow of its core participators.

Previously? Chocolates and White Dresses.

There are many theories of reality.

Some people say that reality doesn't exist unless someone's there to observe it. Others claim that there is a fundamental reality regardless of its observers. The age old question of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to see it, does it make a sound?"

About three years ago, I started writing thanks to a web site that offered a free writing course. As time passed I got more and more involved in this site and became a part of it. So much so that I wrote for their monthly e-zine and wrote one of their classes a year and a half down the road. I even went down to Virginia to meet some of my fellow classmates and the brains behind the site. The site was part of my daily routine, I made friends who changed my life.

A year ago, I decided to take a break and stop writing there altogether. I wanted to take a local class on writing and get some face-to-face feedback. I told everyone I was taking a break and literally cut myself off. A few months later, at the end of my NYU course, I injured my back and stopped writing completely. Each time I thought of my novel, I'd get depressed and try to put it out of my mind.

This week, I finally decided that unless I got back to the site, I am never going to finish my novel. And the characters refuse to leave me alone. Plots attack me out of nowhere and I keep hearing dialogue. So I logged back onto the site and started surfing around.

The thing that surprised me the most was how little things had changed. I don't mean the site hadn't improved; they offered more and better classes now and they had many more members. But most of the old-timers were still around, still writing their novels, albeit they're much further along. I just felt like I'd never been away.

It was so eerie.

I just thought it odd that when I was incredibly involved in this community and then I removed myself, for some reason it was as if the community disintegrated. But of course it hadn't. When you quit your job and come back to visit a few months down the road, you can often see that things are pretty much the same way they were before you left. Similarly, just because you stop reading a website, the poster doesn't stop writing it. It only feels to you as if the world stopped cause you're not observing anymore.

It made me realize how insignificant one person is in the grand scheme of things and how, thankfully, the world goes on.

With or without you.

Previously? Intimate Stranger.

When Jake and I bought tickets to go to West Palm Beach, Florida, I emailed the three people I'd love to meet.

The next day, on Aim, I asked Rony if he was sure he'd like to meet us.

He said, "Why wouldn't I?"

"Sometimes people don't like to meet web-people."

"But I'm not just a web-person, I'm person-person, too," he replied.

Which of course made me laugh.

I've met web-people before. By web-people, I mean people whom I first interacted with over the web. Each time I hung out with people whom I'd conversed on the net with, I worried that we might feel awkward when the opportunity for face-to-face interaction arose.

But I never did.

The fact is, as many impostors as there may be on the web, every person I ever met was more real than most people I call friends today. The web creates a barrier through which people feel comfortable releasing their true self. It takes the place of the mask we wear in our day-to-day interactions. This causes the conversation to be more real, deeper and accelerates the friendship process. By the time you meet the person, you already know so much about them that it's nearly impossible not to get along.

But none of this prepared me for how easy it would be for Jake and I to hang out with Daphna and Rony. We met at 5pm on Saturday afternoon and chatted till after 10pm. Conversation flew like water, not even one single awkward silence in five hours.



We then coaxed six into meeting with us at 10pm on Sunday evening. Here's a person whose name I didn't even know until a few days ago, but whose life I'd followed for months. Someone who helped me do a lot of soul-searching. Another encounter that surpassed our already high expectations.

As if we hadn't taken up enough of their weekend, Rony and Daphne met up with us once more on Monday to introduce us to the pleasures of Cuban cuisine. And it really wasn't spicy! They were way too kind and generous. It was as if we'd met long ago.

The great thing is that, to me, Daphne, Rony and Six are no longer web people.

They are real and I have the pictures to prove it.

Previously? South Beach.

My friend Manu talks about writing personal entries.

I've had my own battle about this subject matter.

I started writing this site about a year ago. For the first few months, I didn't really know what to say and I spent too much time reading different logs and emulating their styles. I wavered back and forth between posting links and short vignettes and opinions, etc. I was very aware of my audience and the need to please them. And pleasing an invisible audience is a very difficult task.

I spent the first few months concentrating so much on how many hits I got and whether my visitors came back for more, that it didn't occur to me to worry about divulging personal information. I remember telling a few coworkers about my page and feeling slightly weird about it for a little while.

And then everything went downhill from there. I went through a bout of utter discomfort about my content. I kept questioning every idea, pausing on every word and it got to a point where writing a post became more torture than fun. And what's the point of doing this if it's not gonna be fun?

I emailed some of the people whose sites I read, ones who published content that I considered very personal. I asked them how they managed to feel comfortable divulging so much about themselves and the people in their lives. I read their thoughts and I thought.

I thought for a long time.

Finally I came to the conclusion that it's a lot of work to read my site daily. Or even once a week. I write long entries that require more than glance and a click. Most people would probably get bored before they hit the third line. So if anyone actually bothered to read my site religiously to find out my personal thoughts, opinions, feelings on things, they can be my guests. At that level of dedication, they deserve to know everything about me.

As someone intelligent once said, "If you stopped worrying about what people think of you, you'd notice how little time they spend thinking about you."

So I made a few rules; I rarely mention names (since my friends might not share my opinions on not needing anonymity and they deserve their right to privacy), I don't say anything that I would mind someone repeating back to me, I don't post issues that I am extremely touchy on or news that I'm not ready to tell the world, yet. I also choose the people I tell about my site. I don't explicitly tell any family member, work mate, or really close friend about it.

That's about it.

If people track me down using a search engine and find the site on their own, than they're welcome to read all about me. So far, this system has worked wonderfully for me. I write what I want and I really haven't gotten email or comments about anyone that made me anything short of proud of what I write.

I think the call on how much you divulge is totally yours. If you don't want to get personal, don't. But if you do and feel constrained by an invisible audience maybe you should rethink.

After all, like your life, you should be the one who has control over the contents of your site.

Previously? Meanie.

Okay, I apologize ahead of time and give you fair warning that what you're about to read is something I feel very strongly about and since I'm extremely emotional, this might be painful to read. It might take me some time to get to my point. It also will probably repeat some issues I mentioned in previous posts.

You've been warned.

I've never considered myself a web person. I've been familiar with the web for a very long time and had a web page back when Mosaic was the cool browser. I even did an art project in college about intermingling art and web technology. But until recently, I used the web mostly as a tool to get information. I read newspapers, I looked up movie locations and reviews, I researched stuff, and that was about it.

I can't remember the first weblog I read. I can't remember how I discovered most of the sites that are now part of my daily routine. But, somehow, I found a site and started following the links until I discovered a whole new world.

I'm still not a web person. I guess what I mean when I say "web person" is someone whose primary job/interest is the web. I love the web. I love writing my site. I love reading other people's sites. But I have a job that doesn't use any web technology. I volunteer at an organization that doesn't have computers in each room, let alone dial-up access. Most of my friends don't know HTML and almost none read my site. A few close ones do but many don't.

The thing is if the web were like the real world, it would be extremely difficult for me to have my own little corner. Imagine walking into a magazine's office and asking to have your own section. Or an art gallery to have your work displayed. Most of the world is very structured and segregated. There are committees that decide the value of your work. College admissions offices tell you whether you deserve to get in. Publishers decide the future of your book. It doesn't matter whether you poured your soul into a piece or not, if the woman at the publishing house had a bad morning, your novel will not see the light of day.

The real world is full of rejection. Full of "you're not good enough", "you lack the necessary background", and many other forms of limitations. There are millions of preconceived notions, prescribed patterns you have to fit, roadmaps you have to follow, asses you must kiss, before you're even given a chance.

But it takes you ten minutes to setup your own web page. This little corner will let you show off your novel, photographs, artwork, or many other incredible talents. The web allows you to bring people together in the most awe-inspiring ways. It allows you to meet someone halfway around the world who shares the same interests and can broaden your mind instantaneously.

Where else can you do that?

Sure I can write my words in a diary and still get them out, but this way I get to share them with the whole world. I put myself out there and I get rewarded. It's like getting your work displayed, not just in a small gallery, but to the whole world.

Why are criteria and elitism the only harbingers of success?

And what's so terrible about trying?

Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." And yet, people get stifled so early on. Your lack of talent is recognized and hammered into you at an early age. "You really can't draw, honey, why don't you try being a biology major instead?" I remember an anecdote I read in a novel about the author visiting a kindergarten and asking the students who could draw and all the hands shot up. The author then went to a college classroom and asked the same question and very few hands were raised. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we're taught to stop trying. Since badness is discouraged and we're bad, we should just give it all up.

And after all this rambling, I'll come out and say my point. Earlier this week someone made a comment on a metatalk thread that drove me absolutely crazy. It doesn't matter who as such comments have been made in several places and instances, by many different people. These people think that the web should emulate the elitism of the real world. They feel that your having your own homepage is unacceptable unless it's perfect. And before you ask, yes, of course, they happen to be the judges of material that qualifies as perfect. They believe letting you have your own web site overpopulates the web with crap.

Aren't they fucking nice?

The thing is, I totally understand the right to judge something that was submitted to your inspection. If you have a site where you post submissions and someone enters and you don't like their work, you have every right to turn it down and you don't even need to give a reason, because it's your site and you can do whatever you damn please. This is no different than if I were sending my novel to Random House and they refused to publish it. At the end of the day, by accepting your work, they are agreeing to put their name on your work and if they don't like it, they should have the right not to give you their name. Totally fair.

Not letting people make their own pages, however, is not.

Assuming you should get to choose who's deserving of having a web page is ridiculous. It's nothing but pompousness.

The great thing about using the web is that you get to choose the sites you go to. So here's my little message to the people who feel that the web is getting diluted with crap:

"Surf elsewhere and shut the fuck up."

Previously? Reflection.

Guess what?

It wasn't a bone. I ate my filling. I had a temporary crown filling on the upper left corner of my mouth and it's no longer there. I now have a huge hole in that very spot. I contact my dentist who tells me not to eat anything hot or cold until I can get into his office. So here I am, still couch-bound and now with a pounding tooth as well as the grinding, stinging feeling on my back.

Loving life!

I remember that when I read Meg's comments, I was thinking about how much I agree. It's amazing how much and quickly I've managed to integrate many web-based services into my life. I don't want them to go away. Having read Heather and Caterina in the last two days, I feel like things are slipping and I want to hold on. As much as I've enjoyed taking advantage of the Internet boom on a user level, I'm not and never really have been a true part of the web-based career world. Considering the highly technical school I attended, it’s weird but I can only think of one real close friend who started his own firm and ended up selling it to a bigger company, making a lot of money as a result. I remember being extremely happy for him. This friend worked extremely hard, developed a great piece of software and got what he deserved. While I laughed at the other people buying stock in companies that barely existed, I marveled in my friend’s good fortune.

Besides him, I don't have any close friends who work in the Internet industry, so I haven't had the annoying conversations with millionaires who certainly don't deserve it and I don't know anything about the stupid VCs who accelerated and augmented everything. I also don't personally know the people who are now losing their jobs because of the hype. I understand that some ideas were stupid and should never have gotten funded but some of the others were great and should stay around. It's not fair that we're in this 'all or nothing' move. How can all the Internet or web based companies be bundled into one thing? Why does it have to be that they are all worth millions or nothing?

It's weird. My life doesn't depend on it, neither does my job or the jobs of my close friends, but reading all the recent comments, I feel frustrated and angry. I don't want this to go away. I don't want people to give up. The amount of creativity that has exploded in the last few years had made my life so much better that the idea of not having it makes me truly depressed.

For those of you who did know a millionaire snotty friend who got rich from holding stocks or options on a moronic idea, you can now rest in peace that those days are over and the fact that you didn't take that road did finally pay off. But for all the others, I'm praying that your good intentions and amazing courage will pay off, too.

Cause you deserve it.

Previously?

I also noticed that the list of 'my favorite blogs' varies only slightly amongst pages. What do these people have that the others don't? I wonder if weblogging has gotten to be like high school where you're either 'in' or you're not. How do you get in?

Maybe it's all just random and most likely, it doesn't even matter.

I guess I am just curious cause I just started this journey and I like to analyze things to death.