Dear Commenters: We're Always Telling
You How Much We Love You, But This
Blogger Took Things One Step Further
'Consider the erotic potential between blogger and commenters,' this recent eye-opening article began. It tells the amazing story of a slow dance between a blogger and one of her commenters, eventually resulting in the couple's marriage. We got a serious kick out of it. Heck, we've always felt that kind of bond with our commenters around here. But please don't take it personally if we just keep it at the friendly level, as we're already spoken for in the marital department. We'd love to hear your thoughts about it, though.
18 Comments:
I never thought of it as a potential dating service! thanks for your prayers - I think my dad will be coming home today.
So glad to hear that about your dad, Diane. As for the dating service possibilities inherent in blogging--where was this technology when we really needed it, back in our single days?
SWM loves walks in the park, poetry, . . .
- just messing with you!
It has been a pleasant surprise at how many friendships have deepend since most of my correspondence has gone online. Blogging for me also has been an acceptable "guy" coffee clatch like my mom had in our neighborhood. It is comfortable to talk about more than sports with people who may be more substantive than the people I work with.
You said a mouthful, Todd. Unfortunately, you forgot to include a link to your blog so that we could check it out. Here's hoping you'll return and fill us in on your blog coordinates.
Two thoughts:
I'm all for romance, and I wish them all the best, since they'll be living in my backyard. But I cringe at the political content that brought them together. Proof in one way that Wisconsin just isn't as progressive as it likes to think it is; proof in another way that blogs can filter against diverse opinion more often than not. I would have been more impressed if they disagreed about many things but fell in love anyway.
Blogs as potential dating services? Why not, when everything else already is. The internet helps those of us who are living away from the cultural centers to stay in touch; in many ways. And I, for one, have never been on a gay site where the potential dating wasn't present; the only thing that varies is how foregrounded it is, i.e. how openly it's discussed within the context of the site's intentions: even discussion sites, which are overtly NOT dating sites, can contain a lot of flirting.
The day the right-wingers figure out that sex is just sex—all people are sexual beings, period—will be the day that a certain level of enlightenment filters throughout the universe, blessing everyone. I wait with bated breath.
Art, so glad that you've retaken your uniquely valuable role in this venue's discussion: cutting through the bull and telling it like you see it. As for folks with widely divergent views on politics getting together as life partners, I must admit to a slight bias against that, perhaps one conditioned by the egregious pairing of the Clinton apologist James Carville and his wife, a longtime Bushie apologist. That marriage has always seemed to me like more of a high-concept romantic comedy than a real marriage.
As for the blogger in question, Ann Althouse, her politics aren't consistent with mine, either. But I still give her generally high marks for trying to argue her points with some degree of reason and reasonableness, at least in comparison with the admittedly low bar set by many of her colleagues on the right.
For those of us who have loved and lost, this speaks to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2DxkrgpgQ
I love blues music and this is incredible.
Thanks, Greg. I'll check out this video tonight.
All good points, John.
I think the Carville-Matalin marriage is an extreme case. You're right about that.
Yet I do think that couples I've seen stay together a very long time, like my own parents and some family friends, had enough disagreements and differences to keep the sparks going. It added to the fun but also to the duration, I think. They had some things they had to work out, and the love got deeper, I think, than if they'd already agreed on everything.
I don't really know Althouse or Meade; for all I know they'd be terrific dinner companions. I was cringing perhaps at the implication of them both being strongly rightist. Perhaps that's rhetoric alone. Maybe what I was cringing at was the article's rhetoric, for that matter.
No offense intended to anyone, I hope.
Art, thanks for remembering that name Matalin that I couldn't recall (little excuse for that with Google). And of course that's not the norm for anything. I like your riff about a deepening relationship that starts from less than total agreement. Nicely said, and who could argue with that.
But what I'm really jazzed about--awed by, even--is that sublime initial column of yours you recently posted, which I read only a couple hours ago. It's so well executed, and the subject is so unlike anything I've ever read before, that it left me wanting more, which is of course ideal for a recurring column.
Anyway, good luck with it. I'll be sure to post the link soon for everyone to see without having to dig around as I did.
Thanks! Glad you liked it. :) I hope to keep that column going for a long time. It's interesting stuff, to me, and the editor and publisher are good people.
So it was an idea you pitched to them, or them to you? Or perhaps a combination of the two?
Looking for love in all the wrong places - Urban Cowboy (no pun intended)
As a female blogger and blog stat watcher, this comment did resonate with me:
"...Turns out that the way to a blog-woman’s heart is through the comments...."
Neve Black
I met them via an email list, and when they said they were starting up, I pointed them to my website. Then they asked me to do a column for them. I thought a long time, about 950 milliseconds, then said yes. So, I guess it was mutual. :)
I'll also be contributing book reviews, and some visual art, photography. Stay tuned!
I'd heartily second that, Neve. Perhaps you'd have to have been a writer in print for as many years as I was (prior to the web) to appreciate how revolutionary this response mechanism of comments really is for us. Print veterans used to try (often in vain) to console ourselves about not hearing much of anything about most of what we'd written with hoary industry bromides we'd mutter to each other over cocktails, probably more fantasy than fact, such as one I remember about how each letter to the editor that actually arrived supposedly meant a hundred people intended to send one. It didn't help much, I can assure you.
The really beautiful thing about blog comments, though, is even greater than the feedback, which is more than good enough in itself. It's the fact that it can become a conversation, and not only between the writer and his/her readers, but between readers themselves. That's a magical thing to watch unfold.
Art, that's awesome. Good for you, amigo. As I read that initial column (and I say this without ever having met you), I could feel how perfectly in tune you were with the subject, and how much fresh insight you had to contribute about it. The whole subject is so wonderfully counterintuitive, at least on the surface, that it's perfect for your smart, no-bullshit approach.
John: I loved the article and don't know how I missed it in the NYT so thanks for the heads up. Good for Meade, offering up his SS# so she could to a background check. :-)
It was eye-opening and memorable on so many levels, dear anon. And it is easy to miss great things in the NYT, because Lord knows there's so much of it. But it is far easier to miss things if you read it online only. I happened to catch it in the print edition. Anyway, glad you found value in it and hope you'll keep coming back.
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