Blogging: The Two Towers

Over the weekend I posted a short written review of the movie “Oz the Great and Powerful”.  I did a review where I made fun of the movie.  The reason I did this is that many people in this community respond better to negative reviews.  I am not sure if this is something that is different in this on-line community or if it is true about many on-line communities.  I did not receive any comments on my blog, which was very discouraging, though I did have a lot of views.

I learned a lot about writing the blog.  By getting no comments I felt that no one cared that I wrote it or that I did not do a good job.  Even though I felt like I did a fairly good job in my writing and I enjoyed writing the blog it felt as though it was all for nothing since I received no feedback from the community.  This once again leads me to a battle between just wanting to express feelings/opinions and wanting to entertain or gain others approval.  I feel that I reach this tension at every turn while exploring this community.  The fact that I felt that if no one was going to comment on my blog post then why should I blog shows that I may have been blogging for others rather then myself.  I wanted to be liked in this community, I wanted people to give me feedback, I wanted to make new friends, and I thought that blogging would help this.  In our physical communities we also try to do things to get approval from our peers and others in the community so I am not sure why a digital community would be any different.  Regardless of where the community is we tend to one to be part of it, part of something bigger, part of somewhere that we feel we belong.  I know it is strange that I came to this though just because I received no comments on my blog but I showed me how I feel about wanting to belong.

I cannot believe that this is almost over and that I have already spent several weeks in this community.  As I enter into my last week of this assignment I am going to reflect on everything I have learned so far.  I usually give myself an assignment for the week, but this week my only assignment will be deciding if I want to continue to be a part of this community still or not.