I was reading darkside's blog & his recent excellent post "Divorceland: Truth, Lies and Sadness", burning up the charts & zillions of responses. it gave me lots of food for thought & reminds me of a lot of stuff Ive read. his post taken alone was quite significant, but then I looked thru his blog, with possibly dozens of posts with slight variations on the same subject!! [breaking up with his 15yr wife with several children!! the wife, discovering/deciding she's a lesbian!!] yeeks!! its so melodramatic, and please dont hate me for saying this.. I almost wonder if its totally "for real"...!!

I have defn been having lots of fun reading OS blogs. but shew!! after awhile, it really fries your neurons. I know some ppl maybe just write their blogs & dont read anyone else, and maybe theres other ppl who read a lot of other ppls posts. how many are there per day on average, anyway? wave upon wave of humanity.

it seems this blogging stuff is still in its infancy, and we need better tools to organize the streaming firehose of content. open salon comes close to having some basic organizing principles, but I can see theres a lot of room for innovation. Ive been getting lots of ideas, but software evolution can be slow at times!! speaking from 1sthand experience!! [I could do a real awesome number on the open salon functionality if they'd hire me as a feature consultant.. turn it into even more of a killer app.. wink]

anyway, darksides post reminded me of this research on teenage girls that showed that they tended to "co-ruminate" on each others problems and end up depressing each other. which shows, I think there is a limit to sharing. our society is increasingly recognizing this with the term "oversharing" or the term TMI, too much information. but blogs are very young as a literary form [embryonic, even, arguably], and its really not clear what the boundaries are. the boundaries are being written and rewritten as we speak.

but, check out a few of these links for more info on the now-documented and scientifically identified phenomenon. I am the 1st to know.. after many hrs in cyberspace.. sometimes reading and writing recharges you, sometimes it drains you. its probably altering the psychology and neuronal structure of our species on a mass level. what will it lead to? hopefully, something better, if we are all careful and conscientious about it, as much as possible. homo cyberspatial.

this research is framed in terms of teenage girls talking to each other, but I think the subtext is clear. its clearly not nec limited to cell phones, texting, facebook, blogs, or email, or teenage girls. its obvious to me, its a general principle. "caveat emptor"

Girls Who Complain About Their Problems At Greater Risk Of Developing Anxiety And Depression
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2007) — A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070716132751.htm

Girl Talk Has Its Limits
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/fashion/11talk.html?_r=1

Too much Facebook makes teenage girls depressed
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10153941-71.html