Journalers happy hour

So, I went to the journalers’ happy hour last night, following David Nunez’ testimony that they don’t bite.
Talked with Jette, of Celluloid Eyes, who did this brilliant impersonation of Prentiss Riddle, Greg Bueno, and several of Greg’s friends from Japanese class.
The group seems quite friendly and social. A good number of the social activities that I do seem to involve some flavor of work (I tend to start and/or organize things). It was fine to show up, hang out, chat, be friendly.
There are sub-cultural differences between journal-writing and blogging, although the lines among the genres are rather blurry. Online journal-writing is clearly a personal genre, whereas blogs can be more or less personal.
Journalers are pseudonymous but social, creating a set of nuances and ambiguities about level of personal disclosure. The social convention for journalers isn’t to have online comments, but to have conversation in a mailing list. The convention is also to use fewer links. The journalist stereotype of blogs is a series of journalistic comments upon hyperlinks.
Journalers (at least my impression from last night) do care about writing. The upcoming Journalcon will be described as online writers’ conference.
This piece, which is a first-person, impressionistic journalistic story, marks me as a blogger, I guess.
I also keep what could probably be described as an online journal, but it’s password protected. (If you know me and you’d like to subscribe, send me email, I’ll get you a password). I started it for a few friends who wanted more of the “gardening,” life-trivia stories, of which I publish a few on this weblog. I’m less brave than, say Mr. Nunez about writing about misadventures for the eyes of potential clients.

One thought on “Journalers happy hour”

  1. I had a completely different reaction. I had that uncomfortable feeling of being in a roomful of strangers where you don’t know anybody and nobody is talking to you and you feel totally out of place.
    I think the location had something to do with it. Very noisy, dark, and closed in. I noticed Aden was uncomfortable and bailed too.
    I guess I’ve got a better appreciation for the folks who had have claimed some of the Blogger meetups were too geeky. It’s not so much the content of the conversation (geeky or otherwise), but the inability to penetrate the group barrier. Being left standing on the outside is very uncomfortable…for certain types of folks.

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