Who's That Girl - Interview

Thatgirl in conversation with Blank Paige

You've been blogging since August 2003, what was it that attracted you in the first place? I’d read blogs from time to time prior to 2003 and I’d always had a hankering to “write” but hadn’t a clue what that actually meant, where to start or what to write about. A lot of my work at the time involved formal report writing and I was also studying and writing from an academic perspective. As a child I kept diaries and was an obsessive letter writer - to this day I still maintain contact with an Australian pen friend with whom I began corresponding when I was 14. I started blogging for myself to do as it says on the tin – think out loud. I’m an extroverted thinker so sitting in front of a blank screen to write anything is torturous for me. I need to have conversations in order to figure out what I’m thinking. A lot of my reading would be epistolary in nature too. So the thing that attracted me to blogging was the conversational and informal nature of it, the fact that I could talk about anything I wanted and to complete strangers and also the possibility that it might just strike a chord with one of them and we might have a conversation. When I started blogging I hardly knew anyone from my off line life who even knew what a blog was.

Talking to strangers is a theme that runs through my work and personal life also – I’m a therapist and a management consultant (a dangerous profession in your company!) – in both cases, I’m the stranger to whom people confide their (sometimes) very personal stories. I completely understand the power of saying something to someone with whom you have no personal relationship and many times the level of self revelation is vastly greater in “anonymous” spaces than it is in familiar ones. I also know the responsibility that the hearing of those stories brings and I’ve written a bit about this in my work life.

How would you compare Blogosphere with other media?
I’m not sure how my corner of cyberspace stacks up against “other media” at all – I genuinely have never considered myself part of the media per se. I think the blog world is not a homogenous one and while the physical medium might be similar the way in which it is used is as varied as the conversations people have on their phones every day. I am really excited about the potential power of blogs to keep an eye on “official” Ireland and in particular, Rip Off Ireland. Several Irish bloggers including Gavin and Potato are doing that admirably right now and naturally the election is going to provide a powerful platform for Irish Bloggers to become real spheres of real influence

On a personal level blogging is a useful way for me to keep in touch with friends who are spread all over the world as well as maintaining personal correspondences and developing new relationships (on and off line). I’ve learned more about blogging from the generosity of other bloggers than I could ever have from reading a book or trawling through a web site. I hope that the Bloggers’ Academy (when it kicks off) can do the same for people who want to jump in and start blogging as well as helping people like me understand what all those three letter acronyms mean!

Was blogging just an excuse not to write up your theses?
Well when I started blogging I was mid way through doing an MSc and there were definitely times that I used blogging as an “excuse” for not writing. I had several “Adaptation” moments where I went off into post-modernist waffle about writing about not writing etc. I’ve just embarked on a PhD so it’s yet to be determined whether blogging becomes a way of avoiding writing that (ask me in 4 years). But the fact that I was able to write for the blog assuaged my guilt about the mounting stack of blank pages (no pun intended) in front of me.

You've initiated several collaborative writing projects (47 hours). Is this something that you'd recommend to other bloggers? Did any aspect of this exercise surprise you?
47 hours (first time round) was an avoidance exercise on my part due to writers’ block – both the writers’ block I was suffering as part of my dissertation process and also that age old bloggers’ block condition. I’d seen a similar project over at Troubled Diva and it struck me as a good way to avoid writing while still having content! As it turned out, it was also a great way to make contact with people whose blogs I was reading but with whom I had no “real” connection. I also wanted to include some readers who didn’t have blogs and some of them have gone on to start their own blogs (and I’m not taking any credit whatsoever for that). As I began to find my way around the blog world with a bit more ease I decided to embark on 47 hours part deux and this time asked people that I’d come to know online – and I also threw out an invitation to anyone who wanted to, to participate.

I’d thoroughly recommend it – and I guess on one level, this exercise is a variation of that idea (nice one Damien!). Lots of things surprised me about it. The first of course was how quickly people came back and said “yes”, nobody declined an invitation (what a generous bunch bloggers are!). I was also surprised at how the story was carried, changed and re-directed by each of the writers and how some of those writers stuck with their familiar blog style and others used it as an opportunity to tinker about with a new style. Some chose non fiction, others went straight for fiction and there was a serious sci-fi theme running around for a while which for someone like me, who knows as much about sci-fi as I do about html, was challenging to say the least. The nicest surprise was that 47 hours part deux won the best fictional piece in a blog category at the awards so it was a lovely honour for everyone who participated


If your blogroll could only contain 5 bloggers who would they be and why?
Oh dear… I had hoped you might say which “sites” would you link to and I could cleverly say Planet of the Blogs and Irish Blogs.ie. If I absolutely had to choose 5 bloggers right this minute (and if you asked me in another 10 minutes it might be different) it would be:

Twenty Major
I started reading Twenty right at the start and I’m flabbergasted at the quality and quantity of his output and the stark originality of the “voice”. He pisses me off, offends me, makes me laugh harder than any other blogger and that can only be a good thing. He’s also a lovely fella as we all know from his appearance at the bloggers’ Christmas drinks in December ;)

The Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor writes a really insightful blog on all things cultural. I find his take on the politics of arts management fascinating and thought provoking and I’ve used a lot of his insights in my day job.

Troubled Diva
Mike’s live (and very camp) blogging of the Eurovision in 2004 was hysterical and converted me into a loyal reader. He has a sharp wit, an even sharper take on life and his inventive ways of engaging with his readers are a joy to behold.

The Sigla Blog
Although Sinéad blogs quite a bit about arts and culture, she’s written some personal stuff that has resonated very loudly with me. I love the ebb and flow of her choice of topics and the way she moves between the journalist, blogger and personal voices with such ease.

Ubik Central
I started to read Chris’s blog at a time when he was writing about the break up of his marriage. He was one of the first men I’d come across who wrote from the gut about how this experience affected him and he commanded a huge respect from me for that – I don’t find too many male bloggers who are willing to go there. During December 2004 I had the pleasure of meeting him and a number of other New York bloggers on one of trips to Manhattan.

My humble apologies to everyone who was left out of this list because Paige made me pick…

What grabs my attention is always the “voice” first and content second and each of these bloggers has that distinctive voice that speaks to me.

Are there any things that Thatgirl just won't blog about?
Oh there are lots of things I wouldn’t blog about. I won’t blog about material that is personal to people I know if it will identify them in any way and I don’t post photographs of people - and there are ways in which I won’t talk about the stuff that I do blog about. I really believe that the context that I create to talk about what’s on my mind is important and goes some way to shaping how that information is received and related to.

I think there’s a myth out there if you write a “personal” blog that your entire life is up on the screen for people to trawl through and nothing could be further from the truth. While my blog is “personal” I make very clear decisions about what I will talk about and what I won’t. At the end of the day I have to be personally engaged with something in order to write about it. I guess my starting point is “life lessons” i.e. what’s the learning in this for me? And is there a way I can impart that on the blog that might be useful or interesting for someone else to read?

If there was one Irish person who you'd love to see blog, who would that be?
Oh, good question…only one? I can think of at least 10 people off the top of my head so I’m going to cheat and say three - Michael O’Leary, Nuala O’Faolain and John McGahern.

Has blogging impacted on your career - positively or negatively?
Up until the awards last week it hadn’t impacted at all on my consulting career. But subsequent to being “outed” (voluntarily of course) I have had several clients contact me to say they are now reading the blog and enjoying it and that has prompted me to get moving on establishing a business blog. I have gone through periods of paranoia about how clients might respond to what I’ve written and when I was practising as a therapist I had to maintain a very clear boundary around how much of myself I would, could and should reveal online even though I blogged under a nickname. Blogging (for me) has thrown a spotlight on this whole issue of identity and how that is formed and reformed in the spaces between the writer and the reader.

As winner of two Irish Blog 2005 Awards, what is the secret to your success?
Well, in the absence of knowing what the criteria for winning were…it’s hard to tell. I was genuinely surprised and very grateful to win in both categories as I was up against significant competition…If I had to make a stab at it I would say that I write about myself and my experiences most of the time and I genuinely believe that what is personal is also global – I thinks sometimes when I’m on form I manage to strike a chord with readers (if that’s not too grandiose). That’s not to say that I don’t have opinions on politics, technology etc..I do…I just choose not to talk about that stuff a lot of the time because I can’t quite find my personal position in relation to some of it. At the end of the day, the only thing I feel fairly confident about knowing anything about is myself. That’s the double edged sword of writing a “personal” blog. Interestingly, at the precise moment at which I was writing this response to your question I got an email from a reader about this post.

“It hit home with me in so many different ways. I wouldn't be capable of articulating these things. Indeed, even if I could I don't think I'd have the balls to do so. Thanks for writing something I can identify with.”

I get mail like that from time to time from people who prefer not to post in public in the comments section and it’s very humbling not to mention flattering. If my assumption is right then this is probably a question best directed at the people who voted for me and those who come back to read what I write. In terms of the “best fictional piece in a blog” award I can only say that knowing some good writers was a definite advantage!

Do you have a long term blogging ambition?
I don’t currently have a strategic vision or a plan (maybe I need a consultant?). I regularly decide to quit, usually when I have bloggers’ block or when I can’t find anything I want to “think out loud” about and I don’t currently have aspirations for a book deal (but if Roisín Ingle ever decides to hang up her typewriter I might just be available to take a call from the Features Editor at the Irish Times).

On a more serious note I’m hoping to continue writing Thinking Out Loud and the fabulous Caitriona has generously created a photoblog for me which has just gone live so I’m hoping to take some more photos as well which may help with the dreaded bloggers’ block! And if that isn’t enough to keep me busy, I’ll be launching my business blog in the next couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to drawing on the expertise of bloggers in the Irish community who are already doing this.

Tell me something about your blog habits - are you a 'read and feed' girl, how long do you spend reading/writing? Are you a disciplined blogger?
I speed read my blogroll each day and I try and follow various conversations and contribute as best I can to the ones that pique my interest. I also try and follow links from people’s blogrolls to widen out my reading habit – it can get very cosy sometimes just reading what’s familiar. I also have made a conscious decision to read more blogs by people whose views are diametrically opposed to my own.

In terms of time available – it depends entirely on what’s going on with work/social life. I’m not one of those people who lives her life online, while at the same time I’ve developed a great social network (on and off line) from my time in front of the screen.

Checking out blogs is now part and parcel of my daily morning routine as well as email, snail mail and the newspapers. As for discipline…does guilt count? I don’t have a set time or a set number of posts I need to adhere to at all…I tend to hit the keyboard when something strikes me.

You describe yourself as an "extrovert thinker". Is the Myers-Briggs classification something that you would frequently use in your professional work?
You know I’ve never formally undertaken the Myers Briggs Assessment although a friend of mine keeps threatening me with it! I don’t use psychometrics in my professional life and I wrote about this in my Masters’ dissertation in relation to emotion in organisations and business. I think psychometrics can be a “safe” way of starting a conversation about what’s perceived to be “personal” – however it’s the interpretation of the results where the real insight comes. Also, I often wonder about whether that kind of testing is really a way of cognitising and controlling emotion out of a view that to be “emotional” is to be “irrational” (I won’t labour the point here but if anyone is interested I may do some more work on this on my work blog in the future). There are also ethical considerations here with many organisations demanding access not only to what is conscious but also what may be unconscious.

Do you think all MBTI's are represented in blogosphere? Would a mass blogger assessment exercise help understand the 'Sphere?
I’m sure all “types” are out there in the blog sphere – if you look at how some people are very open about who they are, others blog anonymously, some focus on areas of expertise, some use blogs strategically, others organically and then there’s the whole issue of abusive posting/commenting which I’ll talk about a bit further on. I don’t think a mass blogger assessment exercise would necessarily help (who?) understand the sphere…but there’s tons of research on how people use the internet and online community building. The psychology of the internet is an area I’m hugely interested in (see below) and when I was practising as a therapist I regularly came across relationship difficulties emanating from excessive use of online communities, not to mention cybersex, emotional infidelity and porn and was interested in the gender differences in how men and women use those spaces differently.

Communication and social interaction is obviously something that you thrive on. Is there sufficient interactions between bloggers? Is face-to-face interaction essential?
In one way there is as much social interaction as you are willing to initiate yourself, whether that’s contributing to comments, inviting feedback, meeting off line, cross posting etc. There is also a danger here that it becomes cosy and that may be off putting for people who are observing from the sides and wondering how to jump in. I don’t necessarily see face to face interaction as essential and it may not be practical if the conversation you are having online is between geographically disparate people - but I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities that have been presented to meet socially in Ireland and when I’ve been in New York. When it comes to learning that’s a different matter and I am one of those people who needs someone to show and tell rather than reading a website or a book.

Interestingly, I haven’t participated in too many conversations off line that relate to posts online, the interaction has been primarily social. Bloggers who are involved in the more technical areas seem to be great at community building whereas those of us who write “non-technical” blogs tend to keep those discussions online. This is one of the reasons why I suggested a blogging workshop where technical issues and key themes/concerns could be articulated more immediately – not necessarily to obtain any kind of consensus, more to fully expand on the ideas that naturally get truncated sometimes because of the nature of blogging and also to help people with the very real desire to learn more about the technical aspects of blogging.

How do you “visualise” Blogosphere?
I’m a firm believer in this idea of blogs as curated spaces…I keep meaning to write more about that, but essentially what I’m trying to get at is the notion that the collection of items we put out there tells a story about each of us who blog regardless of what “category” we blog in. When you walk into a gallery space for example you can choose to look at the individual works on their own and/or you can look at the way in which the collection is put together – what’s the statement that’s being made by this collection? What’s left out? Why did the curator choose to place those two pieces beside each other? etc. Blogs are no different in my view so it makes reading archives and following commenter’s threads fascinating for me.

I'm interested in the idea of blogosphere as a series of curated spaces. In our urge to compose new material, do you think we show enough respect to the body of work already produced?
This is a really interesting one for me…Overall I think most bloggers are fantastic at “crediting” their sources, it’s as though plagiarism has been well and truly put to rest and it’s an indicator of the culture of blogging that this kind of attribution is “built in” so to speak. However we all migrate from blog to blog and it’s an immediate medium so I think you’re right that a view can be established among readers very quickly about where a particular blogger is coming from from one post and also because of the “type” of blog they write.

Blogosphere promolgates the notion of being as good as your last post. But what about having the capacity to periodically showcase the "best of works"? Or for you, is each post an moment in time that once written need never be revisited?
As a blogger, I have some idea of regular readers from the comments that are left, but I have no idea how many transient readers I have. I move between key “themes” that occupy me and then the more immediate stuff that’s going on today, thoughts prompted by what I’m reading elsewhere and lastly some “meta” issues that I think about from time to time and then post. I think some bloggers have sections with their favourite posts and categories and these are interesting in terms of capturing a snapshot of what occupies a particular blogger (I’ve never managed to successfully do the categories thing on my blog). I rarely revisit individual posts in terms of rewriting, but I certainly come back to themes from time to time.

The Blogosphere community is very generous in its encouragement of novice bloggers. However, I've notice many "conversations" tend to quickly escalate into heated debate - and often with ridiculous insults thrown. Although robust exchange is no bad thing, doesn't the immediacy of response work against the tentative blogger and those who work out their opinions by "thinking out loud"?
There’s a whole body of psychology devoted to the psychology of cyberspace that’s researching this area and there are people vastly more qualified than I to talk about this. But here’s my limited take on the situation.

Spatial metaphors abound when talking about the internet – rooms, space etc (My Space for example) and I view blogs and the internet as the “space between” people. As such, it is rife for fantasy, projection and transference. You have reduced information and social cues on which to base an opinion of the person behind the words (and as we know body language is the greatest factor in communication), the internet encourages dis-inhibition and I read an interesting book called Psychology and the Internet – Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and Transpersonal Implications which is an interesting collection of papers on how people use, interact with and form identities online.

If you look at it from a cultural perspective for a moment we’re living in a culture of complaint and aggression is becoming more prevalent – incidents of road rage, poor service, contempt for customers (take a bow Ryanair) are all rapidly becoming the norm. Add into that the increasing incidence of litigation and we’ve arrived at a point where once upon a time we could say “sorry I screwed up” and mean it and we moved on; then we moved to a phase of abdicating all responsibility for everything because it was always someone else’s fault. The tribunals and the discovery of institutionalised abuse has resulted in the phenomenon of “the qualified apology” with everyone holding their hands up apologising “if” some offence has been caused – enough to be seen to address something but not enough to take any kind of real responsibility. I think much of the blog world is at phase two of that but if there are no “terms of reference” and everyone is an advocate of “freedom of speech” then why should anyone take any responsibility at all for what they say or how they say it online? It’s also off putting for people we could be inviting into the blogging world and for bloggers who take the time to think about what they want to post – who wants to voice an opinion and risk the possibility of being personally abused?

I see a lot of bad behaviour on blogs – both in posts that are written and the comments that are left. I think robust discussion is one of the fantastic things about blogging, but I’ve no real respect for people who make a career out of being personally disrespectful of others. It’s also interesting to see how strategic people can be with their comments. A favourite one of mine is – framing a deliberately offensive remark with a smiley at the end of it then blaming someone who reads it as (correctly) offensive for having “no sense of humour” when the remark is consciously structured to contain a double message. Someone said to me recently that this kind of blogging and commenting is the equivalent of putting stocks in the middle of a village green and watching people throw rotten fruit – not much in the way of intelligent debate going on there!

But to return to the curated space idea for a moment – it applies equally to commenters. Tracking a commenter’s contribution to a series of blogs can be remarkably insightful and I’m a firm advocate of the idea of projection (the “if you can spot it you’ve got it” phenomenon – it’s easier to blame someone else for being “stupid” than to recognise and deal with our own stupidity) and transference (we transfer emotion to one person that belongs to another – like responding to someone who reminds us unconsciously of an abusive person in our past etc).

It always amuses me that those who flame and are abusive will be the first in the queue to stand up for their “freedom of speech” until of course, someone else uses their freedom of speech to disagree…the irony is never lost on me. But I think this issue is only going to become more pertinent – see this piece via Damien as an example. With examples of cyber and text bullying on the increase it’s only a matter of time before this issue really explodes. As an aside, one of the reasons I have had to think through the privacy issue (particularly in relation to photographs) is that I have had two stalking incidents in the past 5 years (which I referenced on the blog to qualify my position) one of which I had to report to the police.

People create characters online and identities that may bear no resemblance to what they are like off line. That has been part and parcel of internet culture since its inception – the blog world is no different. When it works well (say, in the case of twenty major for example) it’s hilarious, but when it’s used as a way of being aggressive and abusive then it’s something else entirely. The therapist in me has a whole range of theories about this which I won’t go into here but I’m sure you have heard of the “empty vessel theory”? My suspicion is that most of the people who are abusive online wouldn’t be able to maintain that position off line if they were faced with “real” people and a genuine context for a discussion.

The integrity with which you balance your blogging and professional life is an inspiration to novices like me. What other advice would you give to new bloggers in particular?
Just do it. Seriously, start a blog, start writing. If you aren’t confident about having people read it at the start then try it out for a while before you launch yourself or else just let people that you feel confident about showing your work to see it. Do it for yourself and ask people for help and advice. The chances are, if someone has a blog, they have a moderate interest in talking about themselves or what they know! Start reading blogs and following links from blogs you enjoy and step in and comment on topics that interest you.

It took me quite a while to find my “voice” on the blog and I know that will change as time goes on too. I do think at some point you have to start asking yourself the kinds of questions you are asking me and begin to reflect on the purpose and worth of it all – What’s it about for me? What am I (even if I think I’m not) revealing of myself? What won’t I blog about and why? What happens in 5 years time if something I write today on my own blog or in someone else’s comment stream is discovered by a potential client or employer – will I be happy with the picture that’s being created of me online? How can I contribute to interesting conversations in a way that respects the integrity of other people? And if I don’t want to do that how do I justify that for myself? They are certainly the questions I ask myself and if they are useful for other people then that’s great. On another level I’m asking myself what kind of contribution I can give back and if people have ideas or want to contact me about that then I’d be really interested in having a chat about it either as part of a post or privately. I have very, very limited technical expertise and am only online through the total generosity of a number of bloggers with time on their hands and a charitable remit! So as I can’t give back that way…I’d like to even up the stakes a bit and I think where I can make some kind of contribution is around the “whys” of blogging as distinct from the “hows”?


Blankpaige would like to thank Thatgirl for thinking out loud and for taking the time to answer my half-baked questions. Miriam O'Callaghan can rest easy. Thatgirl also generously provide all the links and references. She is the best! Thanks to Damien who initiated the idea and commissioned me to interview someone. Now it is Thatgirl's turn.