lurking

One of the great new pasttimes these days is lurking on the internet.

I know people lurk here but don't post comments. It's kinda weird when I'll be talking to someone whom I haven't talked to in awhile and they'll ask about a recent event/artwork/injury/rant. Huh? I'll think to myself, and then they'll notice the confused look on my face and they'll quickly say, "Yeah, I saw it on your blog."

What I'm beginning to wonder is how many people are actually lurking and reading this who hate my guts? Before I disabled the feature that allowed lurkers to make anonymous comments I started getting some snarky anonymously-left stuff. Did I know them? Did I work with them? Or were they just using the "Next Blog" button at the top of the page?

I've started finding blogs and MySpace comments from people whom I don't like. No one from the world of work(ha! Like I get a lot of that these days anyway!), but a couple of self-imposed exilers from my roller derby league and a random other person here and there who have managed to alienate most of the internet. Yes, it's possible!

It's fascinating to me to kinda-sorta get a portal into someone else's mind whom I don't agree with for whatever reason. Sometimes I'm surprised at how much I'll agree with them on a particular point, and then a sentence or two later there will be a 180-degree shift. Ah, human nature! Sometimes I have to restrain myself from posting a comment.

I don't want them to know I'm lurking.

Maybe that's why so few people leave comments here. Maybe most of my readers think I'm a depressed whiner and just watch this blog for the chimp-at-the-zoo-throwing-feces aspect of it all.

It's just us, the internet, and all those wonderful people out there in the dark!