The Globe and Mail
August 1st, 1998

The cyberspace diaries
WHERE THE BORED ARE

Self-indulgent memoirs are proliferating on the Internet as ordinary people with ordinary lives gratify their need to stand out from the throng. It had been another hard night for The Gus, but not an unpleasant awakening. "I was actually fairly cozy wrapped in my cardboard covers as I awoke under the overpass beside the whoosh-whoosh-whooshing interstate," he wrote soon afterward. Like Jack Kerouac, The Gus (a.k.a. Gus Mueller) had taken his literary ambitions on the road and was keeping daily notes of every chance absurdity and revelation in his hitchhiker's journey down the highways of West Virginia. But unlike Kerouac, this 30-year-old Web designer and painter had a laptop computer, through which his thoughts and observations were quickly transported to the Internet, where they have, by now, been read and discussed by thousands of people who have never met him.

While The Gus was crawling out from under his cardboard, a 32-year-old musician named Ana Voog (a.k.a. "thee faerie queen," or just Ana) lay motionless across the blue sheets and black pillows of her futon in the small Minneapolis apartment she shares with a dog, a cat, five mannequins and several small video cameras. Ana's eyes were closed, but the cameras' eyes were unblinkingly open, transmitting images of her and her environment at regular intervals to her Anacam site on the Web. Even in sleep, Ana does not want to disappoint her fans, who look in on her often -- sometimes a million times a day. Ana and The Gus are both celebrities in their on-line worlds, thanks to their flair for diaristic self-exposure.

As North American society has become increasingly addicted to tell-all spectacles -- from Monica Lewinsky to Jerry Springer -- the Web has become the medium of choice for those who see no reason why they, too, shouldn't be famously self-revealing. Their number is increasing exponentially. Two years ago, a ring of linked text diaries called Open Pages counted 35 member sites. Today, there are more than 500.

Video diaries such as Anacam are proliferating even more rapidly, thanks to the spread of cheap cameras designed to relay images to a desktop computer or network. Now video diaries are storming the conventional media in the wake of The Truman Show , a feature film in which every moment in the life of an unsuspecting ordinary guy (played by Jim Carrey) is broadcast on TV. Webcam diarists such as Jennifer Ringley, a university student whose unremarkable life is scrutinized on the Net by millions every day, are suddenly turning up on tabloid TV shows and in newspapers such as the one you're reading now. Bravo, a British satellite TV broadcaster, has even recruited its own "Webcam girl," who is paid £50 ($124) a week to expose her home life continuously to Bravo viewers.

The twist in all these real-life Truman stories, of course, is that the subjects know the cameras are there. Voyeurism has never had it so good. But what exactly is being seen through these keyholes into other people's lives -- unvarnished reality or layers of personal fantasy? "Anacam is just a giant inkblot," its creator insists in one of her Analogs. "I am your mirror." She has the reflections to prove it. Every week, inspired by her silent-movie-star looks, Ana's fans send her exquisitely realized portraits of herself, usually made with photo-manipulation software. Her collection may be the best hoard of unused album-cover art in existence. The images are all different, but in each one Ana acts as the muse for another's fantasy.

Obviously this kind of relationship is foreign to conventional text diarists, whose works are essentially private. Samuel Pepys and Anais Nin may always have intended to go public with their journals, but most diary writers have sought nothing more public than an external dialogue with themselves. This closed relationship with the text began to evaporate when the first Web diarists appeared, 'round about 1993. Back then, the Web was a fairly disorderly place, which meant that a diarist could post his or her writings, divulge the location to others on a selective basis and not worry much about strangers finding it. Today, however, almost any site can be hunted down with a simple query to "search engines" such as AltaVista or Yahoo. And even casual users of the Web know that it is by nature a social medium, more geared to the sharing of information than to its concealment.

These days, Web diarists generally know and read other diarists, and they link their sites with other diary sites through categorized "rings" or lists. They may even contribute to an on-line magazine called Metajournals: The Art of Online Journalling (www.metajournals.com), the debut issue of which includes a column about who has entered and who is leaving the scene, and why. At the same time, many Web diarists cling to an urban sense of anonymity and are averse to being read by friends or met by readers who are strangers. "If you know me in person, please go away," writes one. "I have no qualms about meeting my online-journalling colleagues, but there's something weird about meeting a reader," writes another. Control of the transaction, whether between writer and reader or Webcam subject and viewer, is paramount, and it is a key reason that most diarists of both kinds are women.

Journalling is a confiding act, and as such probably comes easier to women than to men in our society, but without the Web's built-in security features it is doubtful that so many women would be comfortable exposing their minds and bodies on line. A Web address gives no reliable clues about physical address, and a camera that is turned on can as easily be turned off. That exercise of power, over the technology and the mostly male viewers, is one that some journalling women clearly enjoy.

"Everything is to be had, nothing is to be expected," writes Ana, who once had sex on line, but who mostly talks on the phone or sits at her computer. "Ana shares what she chooses, through the filters she sees fit. . . . Expectations inhibit the actual experience." In another medium, under someone else's control, she is noticeably less confident. The Web site for her debut album (www.anavoog.com) contains a video clip of her nervous, defensive appearance on a talk show hosted by the comedian Sinbad, who signals what a freak he thinks she is ("weird, in a nice way") by playing up his homeboy persona ("I guess you call it art, right?").

Almost without exception, Web diarists muse about the art and especially the purpose of what they are doing. In most cases, desire for fame (or notoriety) comes second to the basic need to stand out from the throng. "I'm terrified that I'm just a number and another face among the five-billion-strong crowd," writes Rory, the 22-year-old author of Down the Rubadub in a Terry Nutkins Stylee (almost all Web diaries have names, though few are as memorable as this). "I suppose by proving to others that I can do something, that I'm interesting, then I hope to prove it to myself."

Others consider the writing to be a simple quid pro quo for the sometimes guilty luxury of reading. "My motivation stems partly from a nagging sense of guilt and obligation," writes Vancouver diarist Scott Anderson, "a feeling that somehow I shouldn't enjoy all this voyeurism without a little exhibitionism of my own." Most Web diarists say they want to get at something real, however humble, as opposed to the fabricated images of reality provided by mass media. Some even suggest that the diaries represent a mass revelation of truth that may lead the world, New Age-style, to a higher plane of consciousness. "With every byte of `dear diary' that's put online, however mundane or extreme, the more complete and accessible the essence of mankind," opines Kat (a.k.a. opheliaZ), the founder of Open Pages.

"Sometimes I fantasize that if every page of every on-line diary was fed into a computer, we'd have the closest possible thing to an AI (artificial intelligence)." But the reality of self-exposure on the Web is that it has a way of veering over into showbiz. Ringley, who not long ago was still trying to keep her JenniCam semi-secret, is now charging her clients a monthly fee, selling JenniCam bumper stickers and producing an online video talk show called The Jenni Show!

Sara West, British Bravo's Webcam girl, is a professional actress, who has said in interviews that she regards her new job as just another performing opportunity. Even opheliaZ, who ended her widely read oZ diary last winter, says she was beginning to fake it. "I didn't feel I was the person people thought me to be from my writing," she said. "Anyone who read what I had to say was being cheated." Some other diarists seem pretty much immune to showbiz. It's hard to believe, for instance, that The Gus is manufacturing a diary persona that does not closely resemble his real personality. He's far too "truth-functional," to use a favourite phrase of a Toronto Web-diary pioneer, Carolyn Burke. The Gus writes like a hard-living tourist on this Earth, ready to try anything and reject everything, encyclopedic in his chronicling of subcultures and anarchic party experiences, many of them under the influence of his favourite intoxicant, cough syrup.

Years from now, the present time may appear as a golden age of Web diaries. Or perhaps it will seem like a trough of self-indulgent narcissism, of which the Web was just one more compartment. The most intriguing thing about reading Web diaries may be just how often these competing options intrude on each other, as you skim through pages of tedium in search of the aperçu that makes it all worthwhile. As usual, in a culture as full of extremes and contradictions as ours, this is both the best and worst of times. SELECTED READING Why do so many Web diarists have cats? Why does Rory (author of Down the Rubadub in a Terry Nutkins Stylee) think his penis is a cat? Only patient browsing can illuminate these mysteries, though there is no mystery as to how many Web diaries are worth reading: Damn few, and some of them are here.

Lifestyle Tips for the Dead: Nicholas Grinder's life fills him, alas, with no delusions of grandeur. Depressing signs of futility and decline swarm around this dyspeptic Brit, who manages, nonetheless, to convey their outlines with corrosive wit. Grinder (whose real name is Nigel Richardson) is also a good source of tips about esoteric pop bands, and one of the best diary designers around. this.is/grinder

Musings of the Gus: Like a character out of Robbe-Grillet or Camus, The Gus (Gus Mueller) stalks through the painted circus of life, recording his fine-grained observations in a tone that implies that very little of it means much in the end. But nihilism has never been an impediment to hedonism, and The Gus will try almost anything once, except for a tractor pull. This 30-year-old painter and Web-page designer has an encyclopedic knowledge of teen subcultures, and his favourite intoxicant is cough syrup. For days when he is too busy to write, The Gus offers a Random Gus Generator, a program that produces a Gus-like rumination on command. The Gus is one of several interesting diarists concentrated in or around Charlottesville, Va. spies.com/ ~gus/musings

Off Centre: Nancy Firedrake is not a bicycle, though she dreams of prosthetic surgery that might make her into one. When not cycling around the District of Columbia (and keeping a faithful log of roadkill sitings), Firedrake records her dryly perceptive views under a photographic self-portrait -- a different one for each day. "Lately, I have a hard time reading and paying attention to all the journals I used to read . . . they make no impression on me, and I come away feeling bloated. It's too much. I don't have the capacity to care about so many individual lives." www.kreative.net/firedrake

Down the Rubadub in a Terry Nutkins Stylee: Rory is a charming, slightly larcenous lad who prefers kissing to sex, fears insects of all kinds and believes passionately in recycling. Being short of means, this expatriate Brit also likes freebies; in a recent road adventure in the American West, he buys a few bottles for some underage boys, who treat him royally in return. "That was me taken care of for the rest of the night -- I ended up `hanging' with my new, ridiculously young friends, getting plenty wasted, eating some nice pizza and not spending a dime! Sometime around midnight I found myself in a van full of people, whose average age lay somewhere around `nearly seventeen.' I haven't ever felt so old as I did when the conversation turned to curfews." www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Cove/9212/

Anacam: This video diary is terribly dull most of the time but of enduring interest because of Ana Voog's Madonna-like aptitude for making herself into a minor icon. The remarkable thing is that this young Minneapolis woman seems sincerely interested in honesty (she freely admits her occasionally visible breasts are synthetic) while being equally interested in making the big time through whatever means. "I'm just so damn arty, somebody slap me!" www.anacam.com

Words: Vancouverite Scott Anderson glimpsed celebrity recently when one of his entries, an illustrated discourse on the strangely retentive design of German toilets, was named Cruel Site of the Day. The 34-year-old technical writer's site promptly recorded an all-time daily high of more than 42,000 visits. Way cruel. www.spies.com/ ~scott

Core Dumps From My Brain: Andrew Denyes is living proof that a 21-year-old computer nerd can be personable in cyberspace, if not in meatspace. Denyes is as geeky as they come and is just as likely to file chunks of ragged code as to write in English sentences. But some of his cryptic observations have a way of resonating in the brain, like found poetry. "I would not like to see another band with the word `Box' in their name." foad.org/asd/log/

Alice Williamson's Diary: Miss Williamson is no longer writing this diary because she has been dead for more than 100 years. But this 16-year-old's terse daily account of life in her enemy-occupied Tennessee town during the Civil War is a remarkably vivid record of the cruelty of those times. "It has been a beautiful day but that kind only makes us sad: it was not so once. The yank officers who stay at Payne's carried their wives out to see the soldier shot. Friday came back and said it was `quite funny to see the boys chase them.'

By Robert Everett-Green Arts Reporter