I think one of the biggest yet most overlooked unforseen consequences of the internet in general and blogging in particular is the access all of us have to random time capsules and snippets of people’s lives that they themselves have likely long forgotten about. We leave a trail of bread crumbs on the internet: blog posts, comments on others’ blogs and sites, memberships and post on other sites (like Flickr),and so on.
I alone have nearly a half dozen (most abandoned) blogs, most of which are still online. I started at Blogger, made a few posts, then abandoned blogging for a couple years, picking it up again back in 2005. I started with Myspace, started another Blogger, went over to Livejournal, and finally abdicated them all for WordPress.
The first blog, I had completley forgotten about until I went to register a new one at Blogger. I was suprised to find my email already registered and even more suprised to find entries from a time when drinking and listening to punk rock were by far my chief concerns. It was a bizarre feeling, and really fun. I had found this time capsule, planted years ago.
And it’s not just me. I have several friends who used to blog, many of which have left those old journals online. There’s nothing like piecing together particular memories of my life through the writing of other people.
Before the internet, this was unprecendented. What would you do? Go rummage through someone’s house looking for old diaries and notes? Of course, instead, you could go ask the people in question about that time, but that’s nothing like the unfiltered in-the-moment account you get from a blog written during the time in question.
The rapid rise and fall of myriad social networking sites is the main contributing factor here. People get on myspace because everyone else is. At some point many move on, to whatever new site is popular. They often leave in their wake these time capsules. Blogging blew up a few years ago, everyone was doing it. And those blogs, though they may not have been updated in a very long time, still sit there.
I’ve written before about how valuable it is for me to go back and revisit feelings and experiences through what I wrote about them. It provides some amazing perspective on how much I have or have not changed. Same holds true for the online writings of friends.
(I should say here, I am a very introspective, and retrospective person. I get nostalgic very easy. I’ve learned that nostalgia when overused represents a crutch, a replacement for an unsatisfactory present. I’ve also learned that it can distract from a perfectly satisfactory present. I’ve also learned that it can provide perspective to current experience, and incentive to keep living a life that can be looked back fondly upon. As I’ve learned to control over intellectualization I’ve also had to learn to control nostalgia. I think nostalgia is what compells us to attempt to recreate past glories (and always come up short). I believe what we should be doing is creating new ones in new ways, recognizing that part of why a certain time in our lives was good was because it was unprecendented, new and fresh, trying to be nothing, yet becoming something great.
I strolled of the path a bit there didn’t I?)
I just think many of these old and defunct blogs (as well as long maintained ones) are a great thing to have out there. A link to the past, a time capsule to dig up to see where things were at however long ago. It’s interesting that the side effect of something made to bring us a never ceasing flow of up to the second information should have such a side effect isn’t it?
