the matrix effect
What’s it called when you’re talking to a casual acquaintance and they say something really specific about your life or your love interest or the latest book you read - something that they would really have no reason to know or care about because you’re just not super tight with them - and then all of a sudden you remember having written a blogger entry about said book or love interest or whatever and it dawns on you that the reason that this person is saying what they are saying is probably because they read your blog and - judging by the depth of their knowledge - also maybe your sister’s blog and your ex-boyfriend’s blog and probably also the blogs of some of your college friends, and here you are with some random ass person and you realize that they know all of these weird things about you now, which is cool and everything because you know that blogs are public, but, I mean, it’s not like they have a blog (that you know of, at least, because they just seem above all that, and even if they did have a blog it would probably be kind of boring and you’d probably put it on your igoogle bar but never get around to actually reading it), so the feeling of shared intimacy is totally not mutual, and the friendship scales are all out of balance, and it’s not like you can just directly ask them, “Hey do you read my blog or something?” because, like I said, you’re not that close, and you’re kind of a socially awkward person anway, and you just wish they would be the one to bring it up and say “So, dude, I saw your post about Superman the other day, and I really thought…” but they don’t, so instead of asking them about it, you start to feel like you’re in that part of the Matrix where Neo finds out that his reality is actually being generated by sentient machines and that all of mankind is under seige and then you get super freaked out and paranoid and you can’t finish your milkshake and fries and you start looking around for Laurence Fishburne, but you don’t see him anywhere, so you’re all like, fuuuuuuuuck, dude, I gotta go, and so you just go home and write a blog entry about it?
There’s got to be a name for that.
(Think I’ve been reading too much Kathleen Stewart lately. And no, this post isn’t about anyone specifically, dearest lurkers. Geez!)
Hahahah yup.