Prolegomenon to Any Future Blogsterbation

I've been catching up on various people's blogs, and perusing some new ones, and it's a bit melancholic. The vast majority of people I've met in the blog scene I like very much individually, but when blogging occurs, generally speaking, there's all the sniping and cliquishness and damnation by faint praise and even passive-aggressive linking.

There a name I can't remember for the idea of how space (as in architecture and urban planning and simple geography) affects our behavior; the classic example is that when you put front porches on the houses, people talk to each other more. People in New York buy more iPods than people in LA because we take subways and they have car stereos. Something inherent in the medium of blogging makes people substantially less chill.

I am noticing from bloggers the sort of obsessive dating-type behavior of the sort generally ascribed to girls, usually derogatorily -- if you and another blogger attend an event and that blogger is later mentioned and not you, well, that's easy to interpret; however, if both of you are mentioned but the other blogger gets a link and you don't, well, maybe that's a little backhanded, isn't it?

I was talking to Megan once about how obsessive dating behavior is just that -- obsessive -- but that doesn't make it incorrect. It is often quite precise, even if engaging in it changes the nature of the experiment (that is, one's actions in checking up too much on a budding relationship will change the very thing one is checking up upon¹).

For example: you're seeing someone, not yet in a relationship. You send an email² and it goes unanswered for 24 hours. No big deal. But while passing the time, you log on to the personals site where the two of you met, and see that the person who has not answered your email for the last 24 hours has logged in to the personals in the last two hours.

Is this behavior obsessive? Completely. One should avoid acting this way. But are you wrong that someone's just not that into you? No, you're probably right on the money.

In contrast to this tightly-knit web of overanalysis, I hope to somewhere find a gentleman who is straightforward and relatively immune to others' evaluations of him, and we can stay in and watch Netflix movies. I could go back to New Hampshire and find a nice lumberjack³ who has lice in his beard⁴ but, when he is unhappy about something, chops wood instead of blogging about it and then getting bummed if the comments don't go in his favor. Also, it has been a long time since I have owned a wooden birdfeeder. I know men who can make their own sushi, but none who make birdfeeders.

In closing, blogs are mean. The First Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards are both mean and funny.

The end.

1) Can anyone remember the name of the principle in science that states that observing an experiment changes the outcome?

2) A simple one, like "Do you like the Fugees? I do. Hey, let's get lunch," such as might receive a brief but prompt reply. Not something like "Where is this going? I've been hurt a lot, so I just wanted to ask now" such as might be expected to receive a reply just right after never.

3) My college really had a forestry team. They speed-felled trees in competition, but the Canadians always won.

4) Hyperbole.