I then realized that this- right here, blogging- was an online activity that I could post about. My personal experience with posting stuff on the Internet or on social media is very limited and nearly nonexistent. In fact, posting on this blog is one of the only times I have to worry about putting something out, there that I care about, where other people can see, judge, comment, or even simply ignore.
Even though I have been posting blogs for English class since last year, my finger still hovers over the cursor before pressing publish. I know the people reading my posts are the people I see in first period. They are not trolls and would not leave mean comments, and I know that these posts are not permanent; they can be edited or deleted. However, I still have this need to read my post out loud a couple of times before clicking the dreaded button, and I still check once in a while to see if anyone cared enough to leave a comment. There is this nerve wracking feeling even though I am getting used to blogging and commenting more often.
How do you feel about blogging? Is it something you can do without really thinking or do you have to carefully craft a post? Is it nerve wracking for you too or maybe an easy task?
Hey Tiffany! I am definitely one of those people who meticulously checks their posts and comments before posting; it always feels unnecessary but it's habit nonetheless. I'll even go so far as to type it out before in a google doc so that I can spell check/grammar check before posting ( this also comes from a fear of prematurely posting if I type it straight into the blog post form). I'm sure that this weird form of social anxiety is at least slightly attributable to trolls. Even though (thankfully) there are none on this page, it's still hard not to want to double check your work when you see people getting hounded on various social media platforms for using the wrong form of "their/there/they're"!
ReplyDeleteHi Taylor! I'm glad you brought up the whole typing a blog post up on google docs first and then copying and pasting it over to here because I do that too! It's not me trying to be perfect or making sure my writing is flawless, but it's more the fear of someone seeing my mistake and pointing me out on it. It's the fear of publishing something for everyone.
DeleteI also like that you tied this fear to trolling or just online negativity in general. I think people are often picked apart for something the post and witnessing that discourages others from posting as well.