Rather personal post with too many instances of the word “blog” and its derivatives
Definition of blogospheric small-world-after-all weirdness: discovering the blog of an ex with whom one had a traumatic breakup during one’s younger and more drama-prone years. Oy.
Definition of blog-facilitated reassurance: looking at said ex’s blog and thinking "Thank god. We really did both grow into different people, and I really did get over her ages ago. Well, that’s all right then."
Definition of blogospheric paranoia: suddenly realizing that said ex could make a reciprocal blog-discovery, and nervously trying to calculate the number of degrees of separation between her blogroll and one’s own. (A., in the mathematically unlikely but still possible event that you’re reading this, don’t worry: I have no intention of reopening anything.)
Er… [re-donning mantle of independent-scholarly objectivity] I’m sure there’s a thesis about online identity and overlapping social circles in all of this somewhere. Has anyone else out there wondered about degrees of separation between any two given bloggers? Counted intervening links? And has anyone, dare I ask, had the find-an-ex experience? Discuss. (I, meanwhile, will be in my living room watching goofy reality TV until the feeling of blast-from-the-past weirdness subsides.)
I’ve had the found-the-best-friend’s-ex experience. Does that count?
I actually convinced one of my exes to start blogging – but then it wasn’t a traumatic breakup so I think I’m still missing the most important part of the ex-blog experience.
I stumbled across the live journal of someone who wasn’t exactly an ex, but a Person From My Past. It was very creepy. I don’t think they’d be likely to find my blog so I wasn’t worried about that.
I had a good friend find my blog, and then I felt guilty for not having told her about it. And I had to recently tell my mom about it and of course felt guilty that I’ve been doing this for a year and a half without her knowledge.
I guess that is kind of off-topic. Sorry.
Droping out of lurk mode to comment…
I was thinking about this very topic earlier this week. I had to stop what I was doing and google my ex-husband and my last boyfriend’s name to see if there was any web presence. I didn’t expect to find anything too bad, but still, I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t find anything.
However, a web-savvy high school friend that I hadn’t spoken with in 10 years recently tracked me down via a google search to see if I was interested in attending my 20 year class reunion. This was the first time someone from my past had ever tracked me down via the Internet. I felt a little odd and it surprised me. In reflection, I know I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Sometimes I fantasize that my ex is reading my blog, and not knowing but perhaps suspecting that it’s my blog, and rueing the day he dumped such a fabulous and brilliant woman, who, if the blog is any indication, has grown even more fabulous and desirable in the intervening years.
Poor sucker. (Him? Or me with my fantasy life? You decide.)