If you go back and edit your posts you're rewriting history, changing it to fit your current mode of thinking. Personally, I'm against editing old posts (and by editing I mean changing the content drastically. Correcting a typo or minor sentence structure errors are okay if they're done within a reasonable amount of time, i.e. a day or two). Blogs are, as much people don't want to admit it, public diaries. You might not confess you deepest secrets, but you're writing down your thoughts or the day's events in order to have a record; a record you want to share because all blog also happens to be public domain. You're sharing this information with whomever comes across it. Everyone who as a blog must be aware of this fact and therefore filters their comments appropriately. Personal information is distorted into a complex series of codes that only a select few, those who have the proper information to decode the signs to understand the underlying message. I don't know how many blog entries I've read where the blogger vaguely hints at something and then writes something like "z will understand." Hell, I've been guilty of that. Anyway, back to the topic of editing: changing your post doesn't change the past, it only creates yet another fiction around the facts. All of us rewrite our past so that it fits our current narrative. This is even more obvious with the Internet because so much can remain hidden (well, it's not so much more that is hidden it's just those things that in person we can't hide at all, like appearance, are easily left out) that it allows other parts of the persona to "shine." I like using my blog as a forum for me to explain random thoughts I have that. My friends can only hear me talk about complete randomness for so long. Now they can choose to ignore my random thoughts with the click of button. I guess because I use my blog in this fashion I see no reason to edit or delete posts. Repeation is something that might weigh the gentle reader down, but I see nothing wrong with this. Most people only spend something like two seconds on any given page. It would be nice if they had some weight when they left.
I also like blogs because I can write really obvious observations down fully secure in the knowledge what I've said has been said before but I'm getting to say in my own special way... often with less detail and in a non-linear manner.
So, to summarize: editing is bad. Accept the past for what it is. What was written reflects how you saw things and gives you a glance into the "depths of your psyche" (I love psychobabble, but only when I say it) at the moment of the writing. The reader, especially when also the writer, will never get the meaning the writer intended (this is part of my university degree at work).
I just thought you should all know that I wore my hood up the entire time I wrote this entire. I feel SO subversive.
2 comments:
the problem with decoder rings is that we each have our own. and when we use it to decode someone else's message, we simply end up creating a new fiction, filtered through the lens of our own experiences.
i'm so sick of it.
Damnit! I knew I sholdn't have spent the 22.50 on that decoder ring. Wonder if I can get my money back...
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