on blogs and gaming and my future

…or, “how blogs led me to finally settle on a life-defining course of action.”

 

My entry into the wide world of blogging is very recent. Let me begin at the beginning: I recently moved in with my roommate from college after 3 years of a whole country between us. In college, she was the president of a group that disseminated sex-ed to high schools, but beyond that, she enjoyed artwork by Sark, salads with great northern beans, and Group X. (Yes, yes, back in the days when flash animation was revolutionary.)

 

After about a week of re-co-habitation, I started to realize that my friend’s affinity for social justice had expanded exponentially in my absence. She was always on the computer to keep up-to-date on the latest news, and while I was curious about what she was reading I was even more curious about where she was getting her information.

 

Enter blogging. I listened to her talk about the blogs she checks daily, the variety of topics, and the types of conversations that happen in the comments sections. I was fascinated. I set up my Google reader and, in addition to feminism and social justice, added the feeds to a few more blogs from cake to lifehacks to lolcats.

 

The most interesting and revealing part of this story is when I was hovering on the border between someone-who-is-ignorant-of-the-blogosphere and blog-aholic. Listening to my roommate talk about comment wars, I started thinking about e-conversations and person-to-person conversations, and the relationship between an intellectual life led online in blogs and the translation of that life into everyday actions. To me, there seemed to be a disconnect, and my interest in puzzling through that disconnect is what led me to my current resolution: to become a sociologist in new media.