Communication Breakdown
Following along from Suze’s post yesterday I thought we’d have a bit of classic rock. Why? Well, read on.
Blogging is still pretty much undiscovered country for most of the world’s population. Diary keeping has been around for centuries, millennia even, but blogging and its inherent interactive nature sets it apart from the predominantly solo pursuit of journal keeping.
I would say that the audience of a blog is hugely wider than a diary and that is true save for a few notable exceptions such as Peyps, Woolf, Frank. But I think it’s the interactivity of a blog which sets it apart from the paper and ink that presaged blogging.
We as bloggers (the wider we, all bloggers, not just Suze and I) are part of an exclusive and auto-elected club. Being an adult blogger makes you part of a very specific section of the blogging world. It’s a fringe group, loosely attached to the other non-commercial bloggers out there. And I feel we’re often misunderstood.
We choose to open up part of our life that others keep behind closed doors. That doesn’t make us any less valuable as part of the online community than any other blogger. Though some might think that’s the case. There is an overwhelming majority of the online community who would ignore or deride us in public (even if they have a sneaky read in private).
That’s there choice. However I found myself wondering if, moral/ideological objections aside, there were not other reasons why we are misunderstood. That’s it you see, perhaps we as adult bloggers do not speak in a language that the rest of the world understands. Perhaps we are too open, too at home with the terminology, the practices, the recognition of our desires as natural and not sinful that we inadvertently build a wall between us and some of the people who read us.
It’s like me and the Japanese language, I know a few Japanese words but drop me in the middle of Tokyo and I would be somewhat at sea. I would recognise where I was and the commonality that I have with its population as fellow human beings, but most of the spoken language of Japan and all of its written word are indecipherable to me.
I don’t know how we get round this problem, or if indeed we should even try. Adult blogging is our world and I feel we’re welcoming enough. For example if someone has the courage to ask what the letters BDSM mean, or what BDSM is (a question with as many answers as there are practitioners) we’d all try to answer to the best of our ability. The problem arises that a description of any non-vanilla aspect of sexuality from the most common/well-known of fetishes to the most extreme of predilections cannot be complete without an understanding of the psyche of those involved. You have to get to know the adult blogging world and the bloggers within it to fully appreciate it.
Yes of course you can dip in and read what is effectively mass-produced pornography on some blogs. You know the ones, mono-thematic, repetitive and deliberately appealing to an audience whose attention span demands posts have a low word count. The commercial “blogs” tend to be like this, the trash that Blogger seems unable or unwilling to remove, hook sites with petty entrepreneurs attempting to survive by buying content, affiliate linkage and gaudy sidebar advertising.
I think we’re happy as we are, different, slightly marginalized, but true to ourselves and if anyone wants to come in and joins we’ll happily show them the ropes, and the chains and the rest of the toys …
Tags: adult blogging, sex blogging, bdsm, communication, sex, sexuality, fetishism, fetish, fetishes, samuel peyps, virginia woolf, anne frank, led zepplin, communication breakdown
Maybe we just write about what others think about but wont acknowledge in public, were no different than anyone else, we just choose to express ourselves.
I think its important to be true to what you wish to express. The English language is straightforward as it is and at the end of the day secret squirrel readers cannot hide.
The world of adult blogging is interesting on various levels. While many blogs focus on various sexual lifestyles, there are certain blogs that can be subdivided into certain themes or styles, that are repetitive.
1) The Nostalgia blog – one where a writer documents every single sexual activity experienced over their life, person by person, and what I find irritating about this is that the style isn’t different, nor innovative, there are millions of people out there who can do the same, write about every encounter in chronological order, adding the usual x rated lingo. To me, those types of blogs can be summed up as ‘I am so special’, when really, the person isn’t so special; millions of people are having sex as I’m typing this comment.
2) The daily sex-life journal, where every (alleged) facet of the blogger’s life is documented, and I mean everything, right down to the last detail, so as to establish a bond with the reader, and then, what happens, there’s a disclaimer that basically says ‘this may be bullshit.’ So that more or less ends the non fiction intrigue for me right there, I can’t be bothered reading stuff like that because there are many people out there who do read (alleged) non fiction blogs (struggling dads, single mums, etc), to get a feel for a situation, some may read for advice or to see similiarites, generally for some form of guidance, and to bullshit endlessly about an allegedly ‘true’ life turns into a moral question, especially in cases where alleged sexual partners are mentioned, or unaware third parties, such as spouses, partners and ex spouses.
To sit and document, detail by detail, everything about a third party (who has no idea that their personal habits are written about on a daily level), is an ethical issue, and it also links up with the convenience of anonymity as well; that’s when I question authenticity.
When I first started out, I had no idea how many adult blogs where out there, but if I started out, and wrote in detail about my allegedly ‘curren’t sex life, by the detail, anonymously of course, and documented a parade of partners, to be found out, let’s say after my work was published en masse, or if I gained popularity, then that would raise the question over authenticity (particularly if no one came forth to say that ‘yes I slept with/dated her’) right there. So there are many blogs out there that raise those iffy questions for me in many ways.
At the end of it all, I know that sex isn’t always pretty. It can be messy, ugly, angry, all sorts of things, and that would sum up my general view of sex, if I was forced for a quick definition. As for the constant stream of sugar coated sex that’s out there, that to me is self censorship to produce a particular result or response; to maintain advertisers, or whatever else, nothing more, nothing less. They’re happy with that, that’s cool. Do some of those sites try to steer readership (within the sex blogosphere, via site referrals etc)? Perhaps, but good luck to them.
great post…and so true….we are more open and open minded…and that is what blogging is about….if you want to read an adult blog…then, by all means, do so…but do not judge us for the content…they always have to remember that they dont have to read it, if they dont like it…
xoxo