The Facebook Effect

I've noticed a curious occurrence recently after writing a blog post. Once it's done and posted, and I've looked at it from Google rather than from my own account, and I've either smiled fondly at it with a feeling of shy pride or, more likely, noticed a thousand typos and wanted to scratch off my own eyebrows in frustration (because the typos are only ever visible on my phone in a no-signal zone when I can't fix them), something odd happens.

A strange feeling settles over me, a disquieting air of waiting for something to happen. When I first noticed the feeling, I couldn't work out why it felt slightly familiar. After all, I couldn't quite put my finger on what the feeling actually was, so how did I know it was familiar? It would be like being discreetly eaten by moths and thinking, "Ah! This reminds me of the time when...". If you don't recognise the feeling, how can you claim to have felt it before?

The answer became apparent whenever I posted a status on Facebook that (I thought) was  hilarious. Waiting for people to click "like" or comment some inanity on my inanities, I realised that THIS was the feeling. I was waiting for someone to "like" my blog post! Also, I realised that I'm a skanky online attention whore who gets my validation from strangers on the internet, which probably isn't one of my more attractive character traits, but it is what it is. I like people to like what I write, because by extension, they then like me. Or something. I don't know, I'm not paying for Facebook therapy.

The only problem with this is, for someone to read what you've written, they have to know it exists. I'm probably the only blogger in the world who hides their output from pretty much everyone. Far too thin skinned to be in this game, I live in longing and terror that one day I'll log into my blog to see that someone has actually left a comment. Probably not something I should admit on the internet, notorious stomping ground of the criminally rude and malicious, but given that no one reads my ramblings anyway, I think I'm safe for now.