Mousepiece — Blogs offer way to speak out online

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of stories examining social technology use on the central Kenai Peninsula.

By Jenny Neyman

At top is “A Bodenstown Perspective,” which focuses on state and national affairs.is Below is “Hunting, Fishing and Other Grounds for Divorce,” a blog by a central peninsula writer, who goes by “Alaska Woman” in cyberspace. At bottom is “SOL in SOLdotna,” also penned locally.

Redoubt Reporter

Self-censorship works wonders for the maintenance of polite society, but it sure doesn’t do much for the advancement of expression.

The catharsis of bringing up new or contradictory ideas, airing grievances, poking fun or letting loose with a rant at the end of a lousy day is tempered by the desire to avoid causing offense, stirring up trouble or bruising feelings. Especially in an office, close-knit family, small town or some other confined environment, the balance between speaking one’s mind and holding one’s tongue can easily tend more toward the holding than speaking.

With the advent of the Internet, that doesn’t have to be the case. In the blogosphere — a community of people who write and read online journals, called Web logs, or blogs — people have a pulpit to say whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want and have it be as public or anonymous as they want.

“On a blog, you can kind of go, ‘OK, here’s a thing that really bugs me,’ that you maybe can’t talk to other people about. I always wanted to find a place you could just publish without being afraid of what other people will think when they read it. You don’t have to please anybody. It’s just the people who want to read you,” said a central peninsula resident, who anonymously writes a blog called “Hunting, Fishing and Other Grounds For Divorce,” under the name Alaska Woman.

Blogs exist in many venues and are often components to larger online presences — like a business Web site blogging about new products, or a candidate for elected office blogging about their views on issues. But with personal blogs, the sole purpose is for sharing opinions, information, interests, ideas or whatever else the author wants to write about.

They can come in many formats. Some blogs have narrow focuses — about astronomy, car mechanics or organic cooking. J.D. Megchelsen, of Nikiski, writes a gardening blog through http://www.bigpumpkins.com tracking his progress growing the giant pumpkins he enters into the Alaska State Fair every year. Several peninsula mushers keep blogs to update fans on their training, new litters of pups and upcoming races.

Others are more stream-of-consciousness, with authors treating the venue more like a diary that just happens to be viewable by anyone with Internet access.

Some are meant for a specific audience, like a family posting photos and updates of their activities, holidays and milestones as a way to stay in touch with friends and relatives. That’s a popular format among central peninsula bloggers. “Adventures on E” is written by a Nikiski family chronicling family adventures, school activities, health updates and the like. “Basecamp Nikiski” blogs about family ice-fishing expeditions, snowshoeing trips, skiing and watching the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race.

Others are designed more for mass consumption, especially blogs focusing on politics or news events. I Eat Gravel is posted by an anonymous central peninsula resident and ranges from political commentary to “this day in history” updates and mentions of funny, interesting or wacky news stories.

In Alaska, blogs often have an outdoors or adventure bent, with writers journaling about fishing trips, hunting excursions, camping expeditions and so on. “Kenai Alaska or Bust” tracks a family moving up from the Lower 48 and their attempts to settle into their new home, complete with an erupting volcano and the struggle to put in a decent well.

For blog readers, the format offers a constantly expanding variety in topics, perspectives and content that readers can participate in by leaving comments and contacting the author.

“It opened a world of new writing for me,” Alaska Woman said. “Kind of like the search for a good book is the search for a good blog — ones that are thoughtful and insightful. It’s free access, like a library, but unlike a book you can write in and get an answer.”

She likes blogs that are funny, open her eyes to new information or offer perspectives she hasn’t thought of before. But with thousands of blogs penned by Alaskans, alone, and only God and Google know how many beyond that, it can be a challenge to wade through and find ones worth following.

“I’ve gone through some blogs that were just a waste of my time. Sometimes you have to search through a lot of mediocre or badly written blogs to find stuff that’s really thoughtful or interesting. That can be a little time-consuming,” she said. “But I guess anytime we read we discover who we are or discover new things.”

A mom’s advice: Read up, write carefully

Alaska Woman’s “Hunting, Fishing and Other Grounds For Divorce,” is a hybrid of sorts. There’s some chronicling of family events, including fishing trips and other Alaskana adventures. It’s often personal, with the author writing about her own impressions, experiences, opinions and life lessons, but the larger theme of the blog is a humorous look at the wisdom gained from the author’s years as a wife and mom in Alaska. It’s meant to be accessible to a wide range of readers, and that’s part of why she writes it.

“One of the main reasons I started wasn’t just to vent. I really wanted to help people, in like my own little shrinky way. That’s why I put the title on it, ‘And Other Grounds for Divorce.’ I have had a lot of people who, based on the comments they leave, I think they were looking for divorce. And deep down in my heart of hearts, I try to make light of it. Of course there’s like 4,732 reasons to get divorced, but when you start tallying it up it’s kind of ridiculous because there’s a lot more stuff to laugh about and you realize, yeah, life is dirty dishes and laundry and irritations, but you just keep loving someone,” she said.

In a March 2009 post titled “Grounds for divorce,” the author counts the many ways husbands drive their wives nuts, culled from a margarita- and “Oh-my-God”-pie-fueled conference with girlfriends. Among the irritations: “Buying a new vacuum cleaner and trying to pass it off as a gift,” “Refusal to see eye to eye on important issues such as religion, politics, money, sex, child-rearing practices and how the towels should be folded,” and “Using the butter knife to scoop jelly.”

Alaska Woman has personal reasons for blogging, perhaps even weightier than her list of grounds for divorce. Having a blog is a flexible way to indulge her love of writing, for one. It’s a venue where she can write and be read, but without the pressures of deadlines, query letters, word counts or undue editors’ influence.

“I’m deplorable on both ends. Sometimes I’m like ravenous and just do it constantly and check for comments, kind of like an obsession. Then this last month I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ I haven’t really gotten around to it. But that’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to do it. It’s mine. If I don’t post for a while, you just have to forgive me and I’ll get back to it when I want,” she said.

Even though she has editorial freedom, the potential that others might read her blog is incentive to edit her posts and work toward improving her writing.

“It’s a great way to find out what you really believe,” she said. “If you’re going to start writing a blog, you find out a lot about yourself, like, ‘What’s my point here? What do I want to say?’ It can help you as a writer, or just a human being — ‘Am I putting out positive stuff and making the world a better place in some tiny way?’”

It’s also a way to get things off her chest, without having to say them in person.

“Your relationships with neighbors, friends and family, in some ways it can enhance those relationships. You can kind of vent and don’t have to do it to those people,” she said.

But even posting anonymously, the author said she doesn’t put just anything on the blog. Her acid test is to imagine if people did know who she was and what she was saying. Would it help? Would it hurt? As a result, she’s more likely to poke fun at herself than others and mine her own foibles and mistakes to use as examples.

“I kind of think, ‘If anybody found out who I was, would I want them to know what I had to say?’ If it’s gonna hurt somebody, I don’t say it. If it’ll irritate them, I might say it, but if it would hurt them, I won’t say it,” she said. “If I talk about a mistake I made or something I thought was kind of ucky about family life, I always try to bring it back to, ‘What is the up side and how should we behave?’ I really like to try to encourage people to look at the funny side, even under dreadful circumstances.”

At first, it was exciting and intimidating to think of people “out there” in the blogosphere visiting her blog — a limitless cyber world of potential readers. Blog programs like http://www.blogger.com and http://www.wordpress.com track “hits” — how many times a blog is visited. Readers can choose to designate themselves as regular followers of a blog and can leave comments for the author.

“You get that gratification. You get followers and you feel like you have fans. It’s like this little ego boost. But it’s kind of self-centered to think they’re just sitting there, waiting for your next brilliant post,” Alaska Woman said.

After awhile, concern about getting readers, appealing to their interests and keeping them coming back got to be overwhelming. The ego boost of having followers is undeniably cool, Alaska Woman said, but caring about what they think of your blog to the point of changing what you may or may not write is a little too existentially at odds with the purpose of blogging in the first place, which is to say what you want to say.

“I found myself trying to please them, and the readers I had were really different. I would think, ‘What can I write about that they would like or that wouldn’t offend any of them?’ I realized I was trying to please them, which was kind of stupid; so I don’t try to please everybody anymore, just please myself. And guess what? I eventually kind of said something that could have offended everybody, but they kept reading,” she said.

Poli-ticking people off

A hearty subset of the blogging phenomenon is political commentary blogs — people weighing in on world, national and local events, governmental issues and politics, sort of like letters to the editor in a newspaper with limitless room to roam. Some of these blogs are reactionary, responding to the news of the day, and others take a muckraking approach, sleuthing out additional information and concepts and posting it online in a journalistic style. Political bloggers often come from an obvious and espoused slant or ideology — whether they’re Sarah Palin detractors or Glenn Beck supporters, though some strive for a more middle ground.

Two of the more prolific blogs from the central peninsula fall in the political commentary realm — “A Bodenstown Perspective” and “SOL in Soldotna.” “Bodenstown” mines the fertile grounds of state and national politics for commentary topics, and comes at them from a liberal perspective, often lauding Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” and raking Palin over the coals. Although, being a Democrat is no defense from “Bodenstown’s” scrutiny. The blog is likely to rag on anyone or anything that frustrates or irritates the contributors, no matter where the subjects may lie on the political spectrum.

“SOL in Soldotna” is a more rare find, focused solely on commentary about the Kenai-Soldotna area. The author, who goes by Souldotna, has blogged and participated in other electronic media in the past, and saw an unoccupied niche in local commentary.

“No one was really writing about politics and life in the central peninsula. My purpose from the get-go was really to focus on things about Soldotna and the central peninsula. Just about everything on there is local, and that’s the way I prefer to keep it,” the author said.

The author has watched and been frustrated with Soldotna’s development for years, and part of that frustration led to the format and title of the blog. The blog bio reads: “Begin with one of the most productive wild salmon rivers in the world, bring in the oil and gas industry, have almost non-existent land use ordinances, squeeze in as many strip malls, car lots and big signs as you can manage — and what do you get? SOLdotna! Folks call this place Slow-dotna, but that’s too cliché. SOLdotna begins with S-O-L and you know that you’re S*** Outta Luck in this town.”

Though Souldotna said he likes the area and doesn’t want to move, there are things about it that he wishes would change.

“I have a love-hate relationship here. I hate sprawl, I hate the difficulty walking, I hate big signs. Maybe ‘hate’ is too strong of a word, but the strip-mall sort of development that happened here. With a little thought it could be certainly a pleasant enough sort of place. It wouldn’t take much to nudge Soldotna, in my perspective, to be a more livable place. And that isn’t happening,” he said.

He started the blog in January 2006 with a list of “Ways to be a real SOLdotnan,” including: “Leave your pickup or SUV running from October until May. Osama LOVES you!” and “Assert your freedom from big government as you apply for your PFD.”

Many of the posts are satirical, including one about how Fish and Game biologists recommend aerial hunting of commercial fishermen as a way to increase salmon runs on the Kenai. There’s also a list of links to “The Good” — Kenai Peninsula Food Bank and the local breweries; “The Bad” — contaminated sites listed by the Department of Environmental Conservation; and “The Ugly” — Good Time Charlie’s.

“I thought it was going to be more this wry comedy sort of overlook of life here. It doesn’t go into that realm as much as I would like it to. It’s more of a political observation,” Souldotna said.

The author remains anonymous for a few reasons. It’s a small town, and though he doesn’t deny his blogging identity if someone figures him out, he also doesn’t broadcast it, as much out of deference for his friends as for himself, he said. He likes the anonymous freedom of saying what he wants to say without repercussions in his professional life or his personal interactions, if people were to start avoiding him in the grocery store or coffee shop.

That’s the great thing about the blog format, Souldotna said, both for bloggers and people who want to comment. They can speak their minds without worrying about their voice being recognized.

“You look back on the history of the world and politics have always been fighting words. And political discussions in a bar are dangerous, especially in a state where every third person is packing a piece,” he said. “Online, there’s a safe space that’s created. People can respond and say what they want to say. I think there’s a place for political discourse, taking away any sort of body language or being angry or verbally loud or more intense. A lot of people who wouldn’t normally speak up can do so. No one cares what you’re dressed like or what you look like. This medium gives the meek a voice. It matters more about ideas and the quality of what you say than what you look like, what your sex is, whether you’re a Russian Old Believer that dresses traditionally. That, to me, is the best part of the medium. It’s not the loudest that gets the attention.”

Still, there’s a flip side to bloggers having free rein to say whatever they want. There’s no control on it, no requirement that information be factual, that distortion be avoided or that bloggers be nice. Rumors can run rampant, misinformation can be presented as fact and fiction masqueraded as truth. The only check on blogging behavior is if readers catch on to disingenuous writing and stop visiting a site as a result.

Beyond that, the only control over content is by the blogger.

Souldotna said he takes that responsibility seriously. He doesn’t want to spread rumors, he’ll only post information if it comes from what he considers to be a reliable source, and he moderates comments that are submitted, nixing any that are abusive, have no point or are arguing just for the sake of arguing.

“I feel personally responsible,” Souldotna said. “I like to think that I’m a person of integrity, and I’d like to have that come across on the blog, and I think I demand that of others. I’d like to think that I try to explore all different points of view. I think you have to be well-informed. People need to have a reasoned perspective from another point of view. Not that I’m completely reasonable in my blog, but I believe that and that’s what I attempt to do, and if my reasoning is wrong, I want to know. A few of my readers have challenged what I have to say, and I encourage that. Not that they’ve swayed me yet.”

Souldotna weighs in with information and perspectives about local issues, and said he wants to be clear that he’s blogging from his own outlook, which is probably more liberal than the majority of the central peninsula population. But he mainly hopes the blog stirs up healthy debate, even if what he says may provoke some of his readers.

“This is my take on things. I would like to pretend that the take I have is thoughtful and informed, but don’t kid myself that I’m always unbiased. I’m not trying to be. I think, rather than having a particular political point of view, it’s like, ‘What makes sense for Soldotna? For here?’ Of course, that’s different for every person,” he said.

“What blogs maybe do is provide some sort of forum for debate. People don’t know how to debate anymore. It’s always an argument, not a debate. … But part of the fun of the blog, too, is pissing people off. I think I’m doing my job when people are pissed off.”

Souldotna was writing in modest obscurity for a few years. He only told a few friends about the blog when he started it, and it slowly grew through word of mouth. Then in May a well-known Alaska blogger, Celtic Diva, linked to SOL in Soldotna from her blog and Souldotna’s hits boosted from under 1,000 to over 15,000. Souldotna said he’s happy with the level of readership he has, averaging between 150 to 300 hits per day. If he gets more readers, great, if they drop off, his feelings won’t be hurt, he said. He’s more interested in whether the blog achieves his goal of considering ideas, stirring up debate and expressing divergent positions. In that regard, he’d rather not just talk to as many people as possible, he’d rather have some who listen, think and talk themselves.

“One of the reasons I’ve stayed here is, in a small town like Soldotna, one person can effect change. They can do something. Maybe in some small way, if I get people talking or thinking or complain or complimenting — not about me, but about issues I write about — it serves some sort of purpose here,” Souldotna said.