blogger identity crisis

About a week ago, I saw a sudden surge of interest in one of my back entries, the one about fake/not fake bloggers. I had no idea where these people were coming from or why. No inbound links to explain it. Then someone wrote me, explaining and asking if I had anything to add to the ongoing investigation. I didn’t, not really. I was never a central player in this drama. But it intrigued me then and it still does, maybe more so.

Jason Kottke has already written about this and it’s even appeared on MeFi, so it’s hardly breaking news, but it still fascinates me and I feel part of it, albeit in an extremely peripheral way. Here’s the deal: a blogger named Plain Layne, one of the tell-all personal diarist style bloggers, had been writing since late 2001. She wrote sexually explicit material and had some writing chops, too, so naturally she developed quite a following. Then one of her readers wrote an explanation in his own blog of why he had never linked to her even though he read her religiously. The reason? He believed she was fictional.

Within a day (I believe), her site was gone, replaced by a “down for renovations” page. In Polish, no less. Bells went off, people gathered, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys got on the case. Before long they’d ferreted out a possible link to another sudden disappearing act, one Acanit, who yanked her blog three years ago after someone questioned her reality. Thus the hits to my old entry, where I wrote about Acanit, among others. She was a strong writer, often extremely evocative. She wrote larger-than-life accounts of her past and present. She lived in the Twin Cities, spent time in Mexico, and was bisexual. Which could all describe Layne as well. There are many other similarities and links, but others have summed them up and so I won’t. You can read the original post and thread or go to David Grenier’s two substantive entries on the subject (particularly the second) and see it all laid out, the entire “is she real?” pro and con debate.

When I first looked at Layne’s writing, searching for similarities with Acanit’s remembered prose, I thought, “No, couldn’t be.” The styles are similar but not the same. Acanit’s writing is more mature, more world-weary, more politically aware. Layne’s seems younger and more self-involved. But I kept thinking about it over the next day or so and realized: if both women are fictional constructs, of course they’d be different in just these kinds of ways. That’s the nature of good fiction. As a writer, you get inside someone else’s head, make them come alive with as much three dimensional character as you have the skill to shape. And those voices are not your own. They may be similar to each other and to you, just as Layne’s voice is reminiscent of Acanit’s, but they’re not your normal tone and even though you create them, they are not you.

Right now I’m writing a novel with three main characters. I write in the third person intimate, which means I write close up and get inside their heads, eavesdrop on their internal monologues. I find my own thoughts switching as I write one character or another. I take on their attitudes. One has a slight swagger, another is deeply sad, a third insecure and less sophisticated. One is male, the others are female. And yes, my thoughts change accordingly. It’s something you can’t explain, you just do. It’s like acting. You take on the role, you inhabit that person.

I can imagine the writer behind Layne/Acanit. If this was indeed fictional (and I believe it was), I think she imbued each persona with a large dollop of personal truth and invested in that persona completely as she (or, hell, he) wrote each journal. I think it was probably fun in the same way that writing fiction can be, only this time she (or he) got immediate positive feedback, lots of kudos, lots of reader involvement in these creations that took on lives of their own. She/he probably craved that the way I crave my fictional worlds. I miss the people I write when I’m not there. In one way I look forward to finishing the novel, but I’ll also be sad to say goodbye to those characters. I think an ongoing blog, writing an entire life as it unfolds, becoming that person each time you sit down to write and walking down the street conjuring up the next twist in the tale, that would be addictive. Like you’re living two lives, yours and that of your creation.

It’s ideal, really. You write, you get feedback, you watch your hit counters. Something we all do. But if you’re writing a made-up life, you can add and subtract events at will. People fall away when you tell too many cute baby stories? Nix the baby. Bloggers start linking to you like crazy when you go lesbian? Bring on the female sexcapades. Much like the ratings and reviews for a TV series can change the nature of what we see on the show, the linkage and commentary can change the events that unfold on a blog if the writer is no longer bound by what really happened. Which is why I don’t necessarily buy the “it has to be a guy writing this because it reads like a guy’s fantasy” concept. That proves nothing except that this is what readers enjoy. Hell, I wish I could treat my life with such elasticity. My readership would soar. What fun!

I’ve never been able to understand why someone would do this, but I think I’m starting to. I’m sure there are any number of underlying psychological causes, but then we all have those hidden-to-us agendas, don’t we? On the surface, I suspect it feels like a game. Not a “Ha ha, I’m fooling you!” type of game, but more of a creative exercise. Can I pull this off? Can I create an entire life? And then as you write and as people read, you become invested. And addicted. And you continue on as long as you can until one day someone questions the veracity of your fictional world and you pull the plug instantly because the very worst thing to face is the anger. People feel betrayed. People thought of the fictional construct as real, and in a way she was. But of course she really wasn’t. And if you feel tender toward that person and maybe also a little (a lot?) guilty about the secret pleasure of it all, the last thing you want is to get caught out. To have to confess. To have to break these people’s hearts. And so you yank the blog and run away fast.

Some people on these comment threads think “Layne” is laughing right now. On the contrary, I think she’s in pain. Incidentally, David Grenier thinks she should have at least copped her double identity to him since he knew her as both. I think she could never have done that. To tell even one person is to reveal the secret, the little man behind the curtain, and then the Great and Powerful Oz is powerful no longer. The facade has to remain impenetrable or it’s over.

I find myself hoping Layne/Acanit will find this entry some day by ego-googling and will write me. I would love to interview her, not to track down her/his identity but to ask what it was like to do this. This is an obviously intelligent, talented writer. I’d love to know how it felt to create this kind of not-real reality.

Posted by Tamar at June 20, 2004 11:11 PM