Today I received an email from someone who was mentioned in a blog post, saying she never did say no such thing about her niece. I wrote her back, saying it’s all storytelling, not meant to be completely true, and even if you get strung along, please don’t take it seriously.
She called me and said that other people, namely, members of her family, might take it seriously, and it might ’cause family problems’ because of what I said she said. I offered to take off the post, saying I really didn’t want to cause family problems. She then said it’s ok, but maybe change the names? And so I did. Meet Karen and Muriel and their long suffering aunt.
Once a while, the real world overlaps with the online. Like what happened today. Who’dve thunk it? Muriel and Karen’s aunt actually reads blogs!
For quite a few people, both worlds overlap because the joys of interacting online isn’t quite enough, and quite often, they are so strung along by what they see and read (apart from having webcam conversations, eek), they want to actually physically meet up with the people they’re interacting with. There are blog gatherings, which I hear happen very often in Malaysia and the quieter parts of Australia (Perth). And there are people who trawl blogs, leave lots of comments which evolve into a correspondence of sorts, which then migrates to instant messaging, which in turn hops onto SMSing, and then, one fateful day, grows legs and turns into a living, breathing, phone conversation.
OK, I’m guilty of that on occasion. The male blogger way of getting to know an attractive sounding female one, that is. Not that I trawl thaaat many female blogs, but I have left comments in hope of reciprocation. I like reading comments other male bloggers leave in hope of reciprocation too.
But before I dissect how male bloggers style their comments (and expose mine to similar scrutiny), let’s take a look at some female blogs I read and why I’d like to at least correspond with them:
LMD: If I didn’t already know her In Real Life, I’d want to meet her in person, because she sounds like a stylish and enterprising young woman with a beguiling tinge of femme fatale about her. And she writes oh so beautifully. (And yeah, she writes beautifully in real life too).
Lost-in-Transition: If I didn’t already know her In Real Life, I’d want to meet her in person, make her laugh, dry her tears, kill her boyfriend, and fill her jellybean jar with everything but the red ones.
Finicky Feline: If I didn’t already know her In Real Life as one of my best friends’ best friend, I’d want to meet her in person and smack her upside the head for being such a whinger, albeit a sexy sounding one.
Gulaman Girl: I’ve not met her in person but I’d like to, ‘cos maaan, that’s a hella nice pic she’s got of herself. Hee. Hee.
Cour Marly: Who wouldn’t want to meet a high-flying, french-speaking ex-MGS girl who takes great photos?
Karen Cheng: An artistic, articulate and very cute mum from a quiet part of Australia.
There are more, but you get the drift. Thing is, and it has been said very often, the impressions one gets from a blog about the blogger aren’t necessarily reflective of the true picture. But at least, in Singapore and Malaysia, you’d be pretty safe, given that most people here take things pretty literally and would’ve undergone a sense of irony bypass operation together with the compulsory polio and TB immunization injections.
So, more likely than not, if you do meet up with a blogger in real life here, it should turn out to be WYSIWYR (What You See Is What You’ve Read), NOT!
I have a friend who thinks he’s got a talent for sussing out the physical attributes of a blogger even if the blogger doesn’t have a picture online or desribes her physical self anywhere on the blog. I’ve shown him a few blogs that I like, and he tells me things to the effect of, ‘Dude, she sounds like a fat ugly chick’.
And when pressed to elaborate, he’d say ‘because of the way she keeps talking about relationships that don’t last because either the guy she’s seeing is attached, or the guy is a bastard. And there’s too much talk about sex. Fat ugly chicks always talk about sex in an ugly sounding way. Don’t have to be graphic description. Just ugly in the way she uses sex. So she must be a fat ugly chick’.
Now, I really don’t know where this post is taking me, and I don’t care to find out. I’ve got comments to leave on some female bloggers’ blogs.
Get email address, then get IM ID, then mobile number…
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