this may be a stupid question, but aren't we (in comp in general) always talking about how our students don't recognize that they're actually writers & what they actually do already is WRITING, & aren't we always trying to brainstorm ways to give their work a kind of authentic audience & w/it validity beyond grading responses so that they'll have a little confidence in what they can accomplish and communicate and even experiement with? and if so, then what's wrong with (or maybe what's really RIGHT about) interjecting a little vanity into this picture of under-confident under-recognized under-valued "novices"?

My knee-jerk reaction is that vanity is the wrong word. It seems to me that it is vanity if we are trying to garner all the attention, but blog culture seems directed more toward ideals of connections, conversations, and a sharing of ideas.

When I read vanity, I think of conceit, and while I do know of some posts that are very self-congradulatory, I would argue that they are rare.

As I'm working through this, I'm thinking of our conversation on Monday morning about the compulsion to write because we assume people will read it. I don't think that's vanity because we are putting ideas out where people can find them if they care to. If we define vanity along the lines that these articles do, then all writers are vain, even if they are writing in a paper diary. I think that becomes a very difficult argument to make, that all writers suffer from conceit.

Just as there is a difference between being alone and being lonely, I think there is a difference between being self-expressive and being vain (which require arrogance).

I bet you think this comment's about you...

When really, all I'd observe here is that "desiring and requiring an audience" is less a matter of vanity, it seems to me, than sociality. I like Tyra's idea, that we might rethink vanity or reclaim it as a good in certain contexts. So, who's going to write "In Praise of Vanity"?

cgb

I think vanity might be a misinterpretation of what is happening. Here's my cockeyed theory. In terms of what van Dijck called a signature, and in terms of the blog being a remediation of the journal or personal diary, and even in the way blogs are structured in the digital environment, there is a strong element of "self" or in their construction. The blog is also constructed to be a public document (that is, a document one is putting up on display). Consequently, one is putting a dimension of one's self on display. However, I think there are quite a number of ways of reading that action. Vanity, I'd say, is conceivably one, but it doesn't strike me as the most apt reading of the situation.