July 18, 2006

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Blogging Does Have A Fourth Wall

Because author presence and audience participation defines blogging, the traditional stage metaphor of the "fourth wall" loses its meaning. But blogging has its very own fourth wall--that unspoken barrier that isn't supposed to get breached and throws everything into unknown waters when it does.

Josh of A.C.

Well, my fourth wall was breached today. This little postmodern internet verfremdungseffekt isn't as dramatic as I made it sound, but it is at least a little surreal. I posted several months back about a couple shows I attended at the Black Cat, including one by Animal Collective. I'd described the band and the show in very favorable terms, not too gushy, but extremely positive. But today one of the band members commented on the post.

The fourth wall of blogging, at least for those blogs that comment on reality, is the barrier between author/reader and the subjects of the posts. In this case, it is the barrier between you and I on one side, and the band whose show I'm writing about on the other. Every blogger writes for a particular audience. The audience for that post was certainly not the band members of the bands I was discussing. So it's a little weird to be reminded that they might be--and are--sometimes reading these things.

It's a little like having one's mother overhear one talking with friends about sex. Everything one was saying to one's friends could be perfectly normal and reasonable in that conversational context, but it is horrifying to imagine one's mother hearing. One thinks back endlessly on exactly what one said, how bad was it, what did she hear, how would I have said things differently if I knew my mother would hear. And it's the same with the bandmember.

If I'd have known a member of a band I love would be reading, maybe I would've spent a little more time on the post. Maybe I would have gushed a little less, sounded a little less fanboyish. Maybe I'd have tried to sound more hip, and displayed my musical pedigree a bit more. I could have used this phrase instead of that one, and been funnier. Do I come across as someone Animal Collective would hang out with? I don't know.

It's the same any time a blogger becomes aware of a new reader, really. If an acquaintance from high school posts a comment, the first thing I think is how they'll perceive what I'm writing. Or when an ex-girlfriend says she read something on my blog, I go back and try to imagine how it came across.

So the whole thing is an interesting reminder that when we blog, we may think we know to whom we're writing, and we may think we know our readers, but once it's out there, it's out there for everyone. One may be comfortable that one's inside jokes, dark humor, and points of view will be understood by the twenty or thirty people who regularly comment, but a look at the stats shows that there are another couple thousand people reading each day. Who the hell are they? Are they getting the jokes? Am I offending them? What are the expressions on their statistical faces?

Posted at July 18, 2006 4:52 PM | Comments (5)

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