Oversharing

I took a class last semester titled "The Poetics of Oversharing"
It was kind of amazing--I was exposed to literature that was way out of my realm of expertise, but that I loved nonetheless.
Our first few lessons/discussions were about the advent of "oversharing". Coined by Emily Gould in her 2008 New York Times article, the term has earned something of a negative connotation. Personal essays and blogs were everywhere, divulging everything from "'specific details about someone’s S.T.D.’s' personal, 'my infertility treatments' personal. There are nongynecological overshares, too: 'My dog has cancer' overshares, 'my abusive relationship' overshares" (Gould, 2008). Aside from the very gendered implications of that statement, the image Gould conjures up is one close to home: I thought back to the blog I tried to write with my friends in middle and high school and how basically no one read it. I thought about social media and why it's so freaking popular (and why people decide to post what they post, including myself). What defines oversharing? Isn't it subjective? Is it necessarily a bad thing? Why does Gould imply that most things that people consider "oversharing" has to do with the female reproductive system? 

And of course, as someone who has returned to blogging in 2019, what do I consider oversharing? Why do I blog (beyond my NSE requirement)? What draws me to it and how do I reconcile with this looming paranoia about TMI? 

Gould says, 

"I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K."

Obviously, I can't answer a lot of these questions I've posed and if I tried, I'd be here all night. It's Sunday night and I've got some homework still left on my plate so maybe I'll have to table this for now, but it seems like Gould hits the nail on the head: something about my ego makes me think my experience is worth reading about. Some part of me does it for myself--is a blog not just like a public diary? Some part of me wonders whether posting about my deep cosmic loneliness is appropriate for a blog but does it anyway because sometimes I feel like I'm just typing/yelling into the void. I guess what I'm trying to say is that blogging (and nowadays vlogging) is something weird and kind of new and something I'm still trying to figure out, but I really like it! Having a "record" or a "house with an always-open door" makes me feel like I've taken efforts to validate my own experiences instead of rely on others to validate it for me. 

And now, as a reward for making it through that unintentionally massive rant, here are some photos:



I've been working for the past 2 weekends on my scuba certification. Above are pictures of our dive site in Kona (other side of the island). 


Post-dive mango/pineapple/guava shave ice...this is a "small"


Spotted this morning in Hilo: a Nene goose, the state bird of Hawai'i



Our dive instructor had to call off our dive today for health reasons, so we headed to a Kona beach instead. I can't imagine a better way to spend the day!

Goals for this week:
  1. spend some time with my new friends
  2. get scuba certified
  3. actually start my research projects 

Gould, Emily. "Exposed." New York Times Magazine, 25 May 2008.                                                                 https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html

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