When you browse the hosted-for-free diaries of diaryland, you'll find, for each letter of the alphabet, a list of the 150 most recently updated diaries. It's daunting. Nobody likes a math geek, but that's 3900 diaries, and that only counts the recently updated ones. Even Q and X have at least 150. As of January 20th, there are upwards of 800,000! users on diaryland alone. Holy crap.
It makes me uneasy for a few reasons, the first being this: Who willingly undertakes this kind of thing? The guy who runs diaryland (poor him that I don't even know his name) must be CRAZY. (That, and maybe not a guy at all, but a teenage girl. Because he insists on putting "haha" in his official site update section, at the end of things that aren't even a little bit funny, like "if you're anything like me you probably get a lot of these in email spam. If not, I am jealous of you haha!"). Not that I'm ungrateful. At least he used you're correctly.
Secondly, there is no quality control. And, really, how could there be? That's ostensibly the beauty of the internet: Giving voice to people who otherwise wouldn't be heard. Creating, for the sake of solidarity, vast communities that span borders and oceans and time zones where our individual identities can be protected while making our innermost passions public and often plastered with advertising.
Fortunately, there are some pretty terrific journals out there, written by thoughtful, interesting people who are often writers, and thus pay attention to generally accepted rules of grammar and syntax. (Like, check your entries for typos and horribly misplaced apostrophes already! And go buy HOP!) I love to read the diaries of Jessica and Sars, since they write well and make me want to get a little glimpse into their lives, even though we've never met. And face it, journals are poo if they're not hysterically funny at least some of the time. The good ones, I suppose, inspire little fan clubs; mini, non-threatening voyeurism, if you will. The jury's still out on whether that's potentially really stalkerish, but since I am among the big lovers of Jessica's site, I'll keep believing it's innocuous.
But it seems that the vast majority of these virtual diaries are much like a little pink book with a lock. People - especially girls - don't seem to be writing them for any particular audience, with the possible exception of their best friends who know all the inside jokes. Some seem to serve merely as catharsis, which can be helpful for the writer but not usually terribly interesting to read, and sometimes rather disconcerting. They're often full of purposefully cryptic references to life events that come off as either overly dramatic or inane.
And, though I'm participating here, I wonder if this unchecked ability to publish is spawning a strange kind of movie star mentality, encouraged by pop culture's embrace of all things "reality." I don't consider myself above reproach, though I do think it's fair to quantify the talent in things inherently artistic: this kind of writing could be very loosely defined as memoir or essay.
So, since I've chosen to align myself with those countless others who want to say stuff out loud on someone's computer screen, I should probably refrain from mocking, lest I meet the same fate someday.
Only I can't.
Because some of this stuff is too crazy. Maybe it's mean, but below I collected what I found among a randomly selected group of those 3900 diaries today, in no particular order of, uh, randomness:
squarelife:
dear love,
i miss you. you are what defines me. im unhappy.
sincerley,
ill be yours forever.
starflowr96:
And people would probably pay me to live like me for a day.
theriotgirl:
You don't hate me, do you? I need some reassurance that I'm not a terrible person. Anyhoo, I have SAT class today, so I need to go learn 60 words within the next hour. I love Saturdays...
weirdandcute:
I had basketball practice at 8 it was scheduled to end at 10 but my unscheduled explosive diarreah appeared. I sat out of practice for a while before I exploded and was sent home... the whole team noticed... and mentioned about the stench, and I definately didn't feel like laughing evily.
obsessed07:
andden..went fer breakfast larh.at 4th level. we all siap the food. i think the food was kinda pathetic.but sec 4s finished them so nvm. :) then we just also ate larh.andden...erm...yarh.tok a lil bit.andden the rest had to go. :(
xmollyx:
first things first - IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE IN MY SUICIDE VIDEO, PLEASE TELL ME! i need you - especially if you own a camera and know how to use it.
qtgirl18400:
We went to Eatin Park and had a yummy breakfast (mmm :p) Then we headed off to the college fair (Ahhhh Britney!!) LoL That was a great car trip Babes! Then there was the creepy guy at the parking garage (eek-I'm scared!)
hylander48:
dont you hate it when you look at a person and all you want to do is hurt them. physically i mean. not that i would.. but sometimes the urge is just so strong.
denny86:
Does anybody actually read this? If so leave me a note.
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