I recently read about a Sociologist who was doing a study of bathroom graffiti across the nation. It makes sense really - in complete privacy and anonymity, people have the opportunity to write absolutely anything they like, and they know it will be read by members of the general public. (Well, of the same gender anyways). And I bet a lot of info could be gathered by dividing the content by geographic, gender and other divisions. For example, does women's restroom graffiti have more profanity than men's? Does gas station restroom graffiti differ from other types? Do urban graffiti topics differ from rural ones? Where does most porno-graphic-art occur? Where do the funniest jokes occur?

It occurred to me that blogs (personal blogs anyway) are similar to bathroom graffiti, without the anonymity and with a far greater potential audience. They smell better too. Mostly. The difference is that since the authors know they will be identified, they will edit themselves accordingly - most likely to shape the sense of their perceived identity. In effect, a blog post says, I want you to know *this* about me, and *this* is what I think is important/funny/stupid etc.

That is an important difference, because it means that blog posters could *lie* (gasp!) or at the very least emphasize what they want you to think/know about them, and deemphasize what they don't.

Even so, a person's blog probably says as much about them as the bumper stickers on their car, and one could (if one were so inclined) perform an analysis of a person by the content in their blog. Is the content cheerful and upbeat? Or brooding and cynical? Is it all about themselves, or the world around them, or some balance between the two?

Anyway, it would be an interesting experiment for all you fellow bloggers out there to take a look through your posts and decide what they tell the world about you, and what that could mean. Looking back through my own posts as though they were written by someone I did not know, I would guess the following:

• This person likes Computers, Under-Rated B Movies, and Industrial Music


• This person hates DRM, Dashboard Confessional, Quentin Tarrentino, Over-Rated Which Fail To Deliver, and Stereotypical American Attitudes


• This person probably wears a lot of Black


• This person is a Listmaker

Blog on,
-CZ

Labels: Blogging, Cultural Observation