Dear (Online) Diary ... PRIVATE REFLECTIONS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN by Wendy Korwin graphic by Michelle Fields There were always the girls in 7th grade who kept diaries. They were the ones who passed notes in class and used mechanical pencils before you even knew what they were. They hugged their pretty, flowered books to their chests and were somehow able to write on unlined paper at the age of thirteen (you still can't, right?). And then there were the kids in 7th grade who wrote rude little phrases in the margins of their notebooks and drew on their hands. They sure didn't associate with the diary-toting crowd during the day, but did they run home and translate their hands and margins after school in private? Or the boy who'd scrawl all over his desk and shoes, and then go home to play video games for the rest of the afternoon ... were his records really erased at the end of the day when everything was washed? These boys and girls grew up, and may or may not still use mechanical pencils or play video games. They could be in college, or anywhere else, and they might just be keeping the same journals ... online. Yeah, online. That's right, buddy. Online. A contradiction in terms? Maybe. A growing pastime? Definitely. People everywhere are still thinking, and still writing, and they're looking for new people to listen. The Web is the obvious answer, but still one that wouldn't occur to most of us. There are, however, a growing number of people to whom it is occurring, as a decent search of the internet will indicate. Keeping an online journal is not necessarily the same as indiscriminately telling your life story to passing strangers or posting your deepest secrets on a billboard. The art lies in relating episodes, giving an opinion, and most of all, telling the truth without incriminating anyone you care about. The Gus is something of a Charlottesville celebrity, scary as that may be. He's a fan of marsupials. If you live on JPA he's practically a neighbor. He's also the muser behind one of the most popular journals on the web. Scanning his guestbook will humble you. Reading through a week of entries will make you realize how boring your own life is. The Gus is a painter, a writer, a computer geek, an observer, and a really, really weird guy. Best of all, he's sharing it all with you! His homepage is huge, and completely up for grabs, if you have the time to get used to it. Aside from having every day of the past couple of years documented Gus-style, he has included an enormous index of people and terms to help you understand his life. Scrolling through pages of entries can be pretty tedious if you don't know what he's talking about, but "The Musings of The Gus," as he calls it, is a cookbook-style guide to recreating The Life of The Gus. Read about daily monotony, parties you've probably been to, and exactly how U.Va. students differ from cows. The Musings of the Gus is no longer what many people would even consider a journal though; it's a product. It's a place people from all over stop by to check on how their favorite online weirdo is doing and what his friends have been up to. And it's even a representation of some bizarre, underground form of art, depending upon your definition. But maybe you don't live off of JPA, and The Gus isn't your neighbor (boo). All is definitely not lost, especially if you're calling Lambeth home until May. Meghan Eckman is an equal opportunity rodent fan, and lives next door. Meghan is a second-year English major, and she, too, is sharing a large part of herself with the world, so thank her. She's also an avid reader. "I love reading other people's journals because it's seeing how different people think and at the same time finding out that you have so much in common with even the strangest ones, and I guess it has some kind of voyeuristic appeal too. I have read journals that I have actually printed out and read as though they were a book. Some journals can be very artsy, as some who write them are published authors. But I don't even know if it's about art in most cases, it's about life and making the reader feel what you feel. Art is secondary I think. The message is first." Meghan's journal differs from The Gus's very much in the same way that two songs or paintings differ from each other. He may be a great storyteller, but she's a wonderer and a gusher. She described her website as "amateurish," but getting to know her journal seems dangerously close to getting to know her, and that's just damn cool. "I can keep the journal as personal as I want to. Sometimes, I like being very personal just because it's interesting to other people. I want to be a filmmaker, and some of the best films out there are intensely personal and risky. You have to put yourself on the line, it's part of life." Putting yourself on the line may seem like an entirely unnecessary and personal choice, but at least to Meghan, it's often one that's hard to reject once you get going and start accumulating readers. "I think part of it is an attention thing. I like for people to know I exist and even to know about my life. The fact that people read my journal definitely affects what I put in it. I can't write nasty stuff about my friends and sometimes I'll leave out important sections of things that occur in a given day." The Gus, unlike Meghan, tends to include as much as he can of the real story, with various repercussions. "I think about going back and editing parts when I learn of new readers, but I never do. People who like me usually continue to, even after they read something horrible I wrote about them. I learned though, that personal revelations in public are not as bad as you are taught they are. I don't write without knowing who might read, but I try to say as much as I can. Sometimes the fun part of this puzzle is figuring out how to tell a tale truthfully without pissing off all my friends." And The Gus does have a lot of friends. He has a lot of people who want to beat him up, too. Amy Rosenoff knows this, because she knows many of the people he writes about. "After thinking about it and reading Gus's page today, I really think his is one of the journals that can be called 'art.' I guess mostly because of the glossary and all the other links and definitions he puts into it. Together with the extensive journal they provide a strangely woven experience. But for the most part, they aren't. Journals that just write up daily thoughts and activities aren't, journals like mine." Amy used to have a pet rat, Bela, but he died chugging rat poison. "Really, online journals seem to be a sort of popularity contest. It really is an ego booster (or deflater) to find out how many people read your journal ... the more the better (ask The Gus). Anyone who keeps an online journal but wants to keep it private or even anyone who asks their friends not to read it is both an idiot and delerious. If you want to keep it private, don't put it on the Web." Indeed. Privacy isn't a thing of the past though; it can't be. There will always be so much hidden, only now the reader is even more aware of what is being held back since so much more is actually being presented. Online journals could actually be nothing more than a popularity check, but what would be the point? Instead, they're an invitation, a potential medium for feedback. There are many more journals floating around the Web and even U.Va. "It seems sort of self justifying, a way for a computer nerd to say, 'Look! I do something! As I sit here in front of my computer typing, I want you to know I do more.'" But we all know Amy's not the real nerd, and neither is Gus or Meghan. That would be too easy and typical a label. After all, they're not sitting around reading an article about some other people's lives. They're writing about their own.

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