There is a weird simulation that has been going on for a long time, and it only gets better and better each day as people work to perfect it, and not to get too meta, but you're part of it right now.
The internet, and all of the tools of communication that we use throughout the internet are some of the most bizzare simulated situations that we can find ourselves in. Now, before you get on the train of World of Warcraft and other simulated worlds as games online, I'm not going that way, I'm going in basic use of text and communications through online portals, it's crazy how simulated our world has become.
Let's start out with the most basic things like email. It's a simulated form of mail. It's not real mail, it doesn't get delivered to us in an envelope, there's no postage due, and there's little to no wait time between sending the email and the party receiving it in their in box, but we still try to simulate the world of the old physical letter, because that's what we're used to.
Let's go past the business world and the internet, how there are company store fronts that are their e-stores and how weird of a simulation that is, that we have electronic shopping carts and all of that shenanigans, and dive straight into this world of blogging.
This is a super backwards, weird, super funky simulation that we have found ourselves trapped in. It goes borderline into snooping into the personal life of random people, but also tip-toes the line of exhibitionism because the author is the one putting the personal information about themselves online to be read by perfect strangers. This goes beyond randomly stumbling upon a journal or diary from a stranger that happened to leave it behind on a bus or at a library, because through blogging we are simulating that interaction of the author creating something personal with their own thoughts and opinions, and the audience sneaking in and stealing a glimpse of it every single time that the blog is updated. With that repetition and invasion of personal space and personal thought being broadcasted to the world to read at whatever point is convinent, we're not just simulating stumbling upon an author's journal, we're simulating a full fledged stalker relationship.
If this was anywhere other than the internet, and I told someone that there are a dozen (or so, I can't get exact numbers on you people reading this because Blogger is weird) people that daily check on my life and see what I am writing, I'd have a dozen stalkers that would borderline in on a dozen restraining orders, but the internet makes that perfectly okay. This relationship that we have is WEIRD, and it only works out in a simulated world.
Then there's also the weird simulation of what this blog and these conversations that I have with you are stationed in. Because of the blog, and because of the weird thing that is automatic internet publication of blogs, this thing seems far more formal than it actually is. Any blog is more formal than it actually is. There's a tradition of publications taking a process to go through, a series of editors and drafts to ever get published, but because of blogging, I can type whatever I want, hit publish, and it's there, but it carries with it the simulated idea of formal publications. When you think of me writing this (unless you know me) you most likely have no clue what my front room looks like, or what I even look like, you most likely have a VERY wrong idea of the creation of this blog.
If it's a late night post, like this one -
I am not sitting at a desk.
I am typically wearing PJ's.
I am typically staring at a pile of clothes that need to be folded as well as a pile of toys that haven't been picked up.
Even if it is a post that I write while at work, my work environment, thanks to the joys of the internet, is a simulation in your head. As much as I'd like to romanticize some blogs, and even some vlogs, it's really nothing special. We try to act like they are, but it's really just someone sitting at home talking to themselves.
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