[essay]

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I WAS THE the proprietor of a weblog proper for one year and a personal website for four. The name of my site was newtonline.

[ Lengthy standing ovation ensues. A beautiful redhead runs on stage and begins kissing me before being escorted off stage by armed security personnel. ]

Thank you. Once a friend and reader of the site asked me: "Why is your life so funny?" I replied that my life is no funnier than anyone else's, that if properly observed and written down, most lives would likely strike you as more interesting than my own. After all, most of my daily entries followed the same pedestrian trajectories: Casey goes to class and his professor says something stupid. Casey has a couple drinks and does something stupid. Casey goes to a movie and finds that it is stupid. Shakespeare it ain't, except when I was talking about Shakespeare classes, most of which it will not surprise you to learn that I found stupid. But still people read, and although the site was so trivial and self-obsessed that only now, after it has ended, can I bring myself to write about it, they read it in great numbers.

newtonline was my effort to deliver a daily snack to its readers, a flatteringly devoted cadre of Northwestern students, faculty, friends and family. It began when I was a freshman and a dorm-mate of mine showed me how to use FTP software; at its peak, it averaged more than 100 hits a day. (To put that in perspective, auction giant eBay receives about 30 hits per day.) When I started the site I envisioned it as a sort of supplement to knowing me, something friends would read in the early afternoon and then, over dinner, discuss at length. "Casey," they would say. "Your theory of the jokemosphere — do elaborate!"

But instead of being a supplement to knowing me, I found that the site became a substitute for knowing me. People who saw me every day had little interest in following my exploits; half the time they appeared as characters in the posts anyway, and reading about yourself is about as flattering as listening to a recording of your voice. But if you knew me once and wondered what I was up to lately, or you met me once and wanted to know more about me, or you went out with me and wondered what I wrote when I got home — these are reasons you might have Googled my name, saw newtonline, and clicked.

Self-obsessed though it was, newtonline wouldn't have worked without that audience. Not because occasionally a reader wrote to comment — though that was one of the most rewarding aspects of maintaining the site — but rather because knowing an audience is out there waiting was the main reason I wrote each day. On those occasions when more than 24 hours went by without an update, I was seized by guilt. If I checked the hit count the next morning and saw that 140 clicks had gone in vain, I cursed aloud. The site may have been about me, then, but in an important sense it was always for the readers. (Not that it was all charity, of course: among other things, it provided me with a rather snazzy record of my last year and a half of college.)

But even as readers enabled my writing, so too did they restrict it. Not in any active capacity, of course, but simply by being and clicking. Things change when they are observed, and toward the end I found that my life, when clicked upon, was made fundamentally less rich. Days are reduced to a few sentences and a punchline; months are stored in smallish HTML files. The three-dimensional people I know and love dissolve on the monitor, reduced to gimmicky labels and a quote or two. Now, it isn't as if I lived my life any differently because I knew people were reading. After all, I wanted them to read. But at the same time there are many topics I would write about but can't because they don't fit my idea of what belongs in a blog. So I ignore them, and they fade away.

Giving up the blog means a chance at reclaiming them.

• • •

AFTER NEWTONLINE THERE will be no newtonline. People in my age group will no doubt keep blogging away, some of them quite well, and their old college buddies will continue reading about their adventures. But as much fun as this medium can be, there's something inescapably juvenile about it. Blogs, for all their newfound journalistic pretensions, remain a simple reification of the idea that people should pay more attention to who you are and what you have to say. (A more recent manifestation of this notion is the Away Message, a sort of micro-site for people too lazy to blog but who nonetheless feel the need to tell someone, anyone, that they have to write a paper tonight, sad face, LOL.) I still feel that need; having an audience is addictive. But I also know that most people don't take blogs seriously, as evinced by the fact that on most occasions when I open Dreamweaver, my roommmate or his girlfriend give me polite but pointed flak. Their message is not lost on me: Blogs are for dorks. Move on.

Moving on is what I aim to do. When I graduate newtonline will come to a dignified end, having served thousands of happy customers in its short happy life. My efforts will turn to another medium, the newspaper, for which I have equal affection.

But I confess to you that in all likelihood I will continue to read blogs, just as I will continue snacking on popcorn. Bad as they are, blogs aren't going anywhere. And I remain hopeful, sort of, that blogs can get better. They would be better, for instance, if they carried less commentary and more description. It's narrative that I crave, not opinion. They would do well to develop a better sense of place; too many seem to emanate from a mysterious void, lives with history but no geography. They should stop assuming I know Karin or Mumtaz or Veko or Fogboy; if they are going to constantly refer to friends by name, they should at least add a Cast of Characters page. I also hope bloggers defy convention; I hope they are as random and crazy and meaningful and meaningless as the best modern art. And lastly I hope that blogs are about more than the blog — that they are but one part of a bigger, better site that harnesses the unique possibilities of the Web, and uses them for good.

In doing so future bloggers may even live up to the praise wrongfully afforded them by John Ellis in the article that occasioned this piece, serving up "the most energetic, lively and passionate analysis, commentary and opinion around." It doesn't seem particularly likely, but you never know.

And that, as they, is that. Every blog has its day; newtonline's has come and gone. Thank you for clicking, and good night.

[ Another standing ovation. The King of Sweden comes on stage carrying a basket holding the Nobel Prize for Literature and flowers. I choose the flowers, and send him away. ]

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