As of 7:11 p.m. this evening—exactly 24 hours since my last post hit the 'Net—I've heard from 37 people on the blog and another 211 via email. I must say: I never realized how great the gulf separating commenter from lurker was until today. A fairly substantial community of people who don't even know they belong to a community encircles my evening blather.
Despite devoting today's spare brain cycles to spinning Lurk Theory, I'm no closer to understanding its appeal—not because I think less of lurkers, but because I'm constitutionally incapable of not speaking up when I feel so inclined. I know some people are better at biting their tongues than others, but I lack the requisite imagination to understand why.
Bits of my brain scream GENDER POLITICS! but I really don't think that's the case. If my (outrageously unscientific) survey is any indication, my readership is overwhelmingly female. Why are most of my readers female but most of my commenters male? This probably plays into the hands of some oh-so-terribly unprofound dynamic, but I wonder whether it's a product of what Kathleen Fitzpatrick discussed the other day:
But bloggers—generally speaking, bloggers seem to be good folks, but beyond that, blogging’s mode of discourse, its reliance on a kind of ongoing development of a narrative of self, seems to allow, if not require, some aspects of an actual personality to come through. The blog is of course always a performance of self, and never that self in any direct sense. But the performance in this form gives me the impression, after having met a number of folks in person whom I knew first from the blogosphere (n=something greater than 10), that the blog permits, where it is desired, some glimpses into an “authentic” identity, which other modes of online discourse have often managed to mask.
Is the appeal of that discursive development gendered? I wouldn't think so, but I'm not sure what to do with the numbers I'm looking at. Should I hold out for a more respectable sample size? Is my male readership hiding in the bush? If so, why? What are these fools hiding from? Or do they not exist?
*Made you look!
In the absence of data, introspection may help. I'm one of the least lurking people out there, I assume, yet still I'll lurk in the following kinds of places:
1. where there are so many comments that more appear pointless (e.g. Kos, Eschaton, many other liberal blogs)
2. where I've been banned but still want to read. (I could create a new identity and still comment, but I don't do this on principle.) Associated set: blogs where I know I'd be banned within 10 comments.
3. where the technological mechanics of commenting are difficult or too much trouble(i.e. where you need a blogger ID or something).
4. Blogs where the main writer is enough, and I don't want more to the point of making it worth while to read comments. These tend to be humor blogs.
5. Blogs where the subject matter is highly technical and I don't intend to develop the knowledge to even fake being able to comment on it (e.g. RealClimate).
6. Blogs where I'm still studying how the commenter pool works and haven't jumped in yet. John Crowley's blog, for instance, I've been reading but not commenting on for some time, although I commented in response to him a few times on the Valve. Usually this goes away within a few months to a year, though.
I don't think that any of these really apply to this blog, so you may be down to some kind of basic imponderable difference between commenters and lurkers. Maybe 4? Your voice may be distinctive enough so that many people don't see the point in reading comments.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Monday, 30 October 2006 at 10:44 PM
I'm not sure what to make of the gender balance among your blog readers: how does it relate to the gender balance in your disciplinary specialisation?
In terms of lurking: I tend eventually to post on any blog that I read consistently - but there are a number of blogs that I read only sporadically, and I almost never post on any of those... I think I need to feel comfortable that I have followed the discussion for some time, and won't make some odd faux pas... Like Rich, I also won't post at any blog where I suspect my comment would be buried in posts: too much work to build up an identity in that cluttered an environment, and I'm generally interested in having some kind of ongoing discussion over time, if I'm going to post... I've also stopped posting at a few blogs, if after a period of time my posts never get any kind of response - it makes me feel like I've crashed someone's party... ;-P
In terms of "authenticity" and blog posting: I have no doubt that people perceive the medium as giving some "authentic" insight into the writer's personality. I'm not sure how this plays out with someone like me, where I started blogging in order to communicate with people I already knew, and where many of my readers are people who know me personally in some context or other: while I'm sure that some of the folks who knew me from professional contexts learned something "new" when they started reading the blog, and learned a bit about my academic interests, I'm not sure how they view the "authenticity" of the blog. I'm always a little bit worried that someone will actually perceive me quite differently from how I perceive and present myself on the blog - so that the blog comes off as some kind of PR exercise... ;-P
In terms of gender on my blog - I of course won't have anywhere near the traffic of this one, and I've always gotten more email responses than posts (mainly because a number of my regular readers are either non-academics who know me from previous professional roles, or ex-students - and both of those categories of readers seem to worry that they aren't "qualified" to post... that, and people are generally reluctant to post when there's not a certain level of regular chatter going on - my blog can go a while without any public comments...). Of the regular readers whose genders I know, only a few are female, while I know a much larger number of men - but of course there are a number of readers who haven't made contact in any way, so who knows...
Posted by: N. Pepperell | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 01:49 AM
I should add that I've observed so many annoyances directed at people who post as women that I wouldn't be surprised that there would be an effect on discerneably gendered screen names. But it seems that in a forum that supports pseudonymity this wouldn't be as much of a problem -- except that many people may fear that their pseudonym may be traced back to them, and not want to get in the habit of commenting in the first place.
And "who raises their hand in class" is differentially gendered in U.S. society, of course. Perhaps the academic connections of the blog help to preserve old habits.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 08:53 AM
Women outnumber men something like 4 to 1 in my English Ph.D. program. I'm not sure if those numbers pan out across the board.
Scott, you might want to check out the new book by Larry Summers and Steven Pinker, entitled *Women Are Programmed To Bake Better Cakes So Let's Pay Them Less Money*. I also believe Luce Irigary has some recently translated work that might be relevant, something like *Women Look Better and Talk More Fluidly In the Mirror of Nature (Which Does Not Exist, Anti-Foundationally Speaking Anyway*. I've been told by Dr. Jacques Albert that it's no good.
Posted by: Luther Blissett | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 01:33 PM
Would that that were the case, Rich. I think #6 may be more like it. Strange that you lurk Crowley's blog, as I do too. It's odd seeing familiar faces in unfamiliar environs. I remember the first time I visited Chris Clarke's blog and saw your name there. It was like you'd be cheating—holding out?—on me.
I'm not sure, N.P. Luther's department may be predominantly female, but I'm not sure about my department. If I had to guess, I'd say UCI seems balanced. (Undergraduate courses, though, present the opposite impression, as they're overwhelmingly female.)
I can sympathize, although sometimes, when the connection's with the poster instead of the community, I continue to spit into the wind. It's also why I try to respond to every comment here—although I've slacked in that department lately, mostly out of sheer exhaustion. (I appreciate all comments! I'm just tired, I tell you, tired!)
I think Kathleen's right about this one, if only because my email exchanges with people who've met me through the blog are almost uniformly pleasant. By which I mean, people seem to have a sense of what I'm like and how to appeal to my sensibilities. So I must be communicating something, even if I'm doing it without my knowledge. But what I find more interesting is how blogging's changed me into someone new, whose discourse gears to a public (real or imagined) in ways it didn't previously. I've more thinking to do on this front before I say more, though.
I did too, actually. If you look back at those early posts, the majority of comments come from "Stephen" and "Some Gay Guy." Stephen still reads and comments, but "Some Gay Guy" reads every once in a while and never comments anymore. I'd call it a loss, but he's still at my apartment every other day, so I don't think it is. What I mean is, the blog's evolved into something different from, rather than a supplement to, my intellectual life. I'm not sure in what ways, or what the boundaries are—but I still do that thing sometimes, where I assume people have read what I've written for public consumption and "re"-kindle conversations they're ignorant of.
Of course, the converse is true. I haven't written about it here yet, but I did mention the Halloween party I attended the other night elsewhere:
So the obverse of expected familiarity is flummoxed, I suppose. As I wrote, I'm still on the fence about how I feel about this, and will likely not resolve the issue before being forced to, in public, at the MLA.
I get a good amount of back-channel communication from readers too, and the reasons they approach thusly accord with those you list. I think only two or three of my students have ever posted comments, although every time I run into them in Albertson's it's clear they read the blog. After I got hit by the car, for instance, a group of my former literary journalism students bought me a giant "get well" card. So I know my kids still read me...sometimes. When they're not too busy getting on with lives. Without me. (sniff) But yes, non-academics also prefer the back-channels, by-and-large. Which is strange, since I don't feel like my voice has that "ring of authority," you know, the sort that would dissuade people from piping up.
As for the gender disparity, I can't help but think it's meaningful, albeit not in the way Luther's mocking me for (not ot NOT!) suggesting.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 03:45 PM
i'll throw this out there just for the hell of it: women might be less comfortable on the whole with the idea of posting a comment and getting no response. or meeting with hostility. i have commented on a pretty small number of blogs, almost always under a gender-neutral pseudonym, and usually gotten either 0 or 1 responses, except on one occasion when my comment really upset someone (you may remember this, scott). and my reaction was always: why waste my time? if i want to talk at all, i'll talk to people i can see and hear. in my limited experience as a gendered person, this is *really* common -- that women won't just speak out, regardless of who's listening, but instead speak to elicit dialogue and grow uncomfortable if none arises. and i think this behavior is reinforced by both genders, all the time, all over the place. individual cases, obviously, may vary.
Posted by: pica | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 05:17 PM
Flummoxed is a fairly good description for what I feel, too, realising that people have been reading the blog in some detail, when I had no idea they were doing this. I posted very briefly about this a couple of months ago: at least locally, my blog seems to have gained a sudden jump in readership fairly recently - and it's somehow very, very odd to realise that people have been engaging your ideas on a regular basis, such that they can kind of... cite them back to you. I find myself really thrown when, in the midst of a conversation, someone suddenly explains, "Well, it's like what you were writing on your blog the other day..."
More humorously, some of my students are now accusing me of being repetitive, when I say something to them in person that I've already posted about on the blog: I was explaining to someone the other day that I blind grade, and got back an impatient, "yes, yes, yes - I read your blog..." - as if I should naturally assume they all do this (I think I've posted on this issue all of once...).
At any rate: far fewer readers, but possibly a similar amount of flummox...
Posted by: N. Pepperell | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 07:57 PM
I know for me, a lack of response, a clique-ish commenting circle, and/or a lack of technical information on a given subject is what most often discourages me from posting comments on blogs. And except for some blogs of people I "know" (even if just virtually), I try to only comment when I have something interesting or pointed to say, so sometimes I just have nothing worth typing and sending out into cyberspace.
Posted by: Bourgeois Nerd | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 08:11 PM
"I try to only comment when I have something interesting or pointed to say"
See, that's most lurkers' problem. I have no trouble hitting the "send" button without anything interesting or pointed to say. After all, up to a certain point -- which this blog isn't going to reach, anyway, except possibly in certain office-sex threads -- almost any blogger would rather have a few more comments than a few less or even none, as long as they are reasonably coherent. The opportunity cost for the blog as a whole is low; until you get to high volume it's not like your comment actually prevents someone else from writing something. And see, this is a response -- Bourgeois Nerd might have been discouraged from commenting again if he or she didn't get one.
That's the magic of comment boxes; what in face-to-face interaction would earn you a reputation as a person to avoid becomes a positive good.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Tuesday, 31 October 2006 at 10:49 PM
Being a former student of yours, an undergraduate, and a woman, I think my reluctance to post has more to do with being an undergraduate than being a woman. The level here is a little scary sometimes, although I like to amuse myself by reading along and trying to understand. But, I mostly read for the lively prose. Another thing, I read your blog before I took LJ101A. You are different in person from what I expected, but reading your blog did make me feel like I knew you before I met you.
I hope that comment was either "interesting or pointed," but I am just going to hit send and not worry about it. And I won't even email you later to delete it.
Posted by: Liz Y. | Wednesday, 01 November 2006 at 03:55 PM
pica, I do remember that incident, and regret the lame way I handle it. I'm happy to see you don't hold my lameness against me.
That said, I certainly agree with your last sentence—mileage does, in fact, vary—but also your broader point about socialization. Obviously, there's nothing essential about the way someone comments—but I do find it interesting that the most engaged female in my commenting community is N. Pepperell, who, as an Australian, wouldn't have faced the same cultural pressures that my majority American audience had. (Not that I'm essentializing anything about Australian women here either, just pointing to something suggestive.) As I hope is obvious, I'm not aiming to prescribe anything here—in fact, I find it alarming that 20 percent of my readers produce 90 percent of my comments. I mean, I want readers to contribute and participate. If I wanted to spend my nights like my days, slaving on a document maybe 10 people will ever read and 2 even respond to, I wouldn't have started blogging in the first place.
But I certainly agree that the reinforcement of gender stereotypes plays into whatever effect I'm describing here. Also, I hope that all my readers—at least, all the ones that read the comments—know that I'm as willing dialog as debate. The debate may be more amped as a result of the commenting dynamics, but I never want someone to feel uncomfortable contributing to a conversation. Sometimes comments pique my interest, nibble at my mind for days and yet I don't respond because, well, it's almost embarrassing how long it took me to generate a response. I think this a general problem with the speed of blog, mind you, and not yet another indication that I have a mind like a drugged moose.
Well, Bourgeois Nerd, I hope you don't find the community here too cliquish. I mean, I don't even like most of my regulars, much less value their contributions. But yes, Rich is right about bloggers enjoying more comments than less. The idea that something you've written drops like a penny in a bottomless well is, well, depressing. That's why academics start blogging in the first place, I think.
I didn't know that, but I'm happy that you didn't drop the course or stop reading after being in the class. Either would've spoken poorly of some aspect of the other, if that makes sense. Plus, graduate students need all the good press they can get, if only to bolster their sagging self-ratings. (Don't know why I slipped into Nielson-speak there, but there it is.) This, however, worries me:
I aim to be accessible, so the idea that one of my best students finds the level of discourse here unaccessible is cause for concern. I mean, I'm an idiot. Liz has seen me teach, knows my schtick, and knows the extent of its "schtickiness," by which I mean, the fact that I'm not stubborn so much as otherworldly dense sometimes. I find the idea that I'm buzzing over someone's head unsettling, because I think what it actually means is that I'm suffering from a distinct loss of clarity.
Sense, too.
And, lest we forget, knowledge.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Wednesday, 01 November 2006 at 08:40 PM
Just a small qualification: although I live in Australia now, I'm actually a native of the US - I didn't move to Australia until I was 29... So I suspect I was well and truly socialised in US gender dynamics before I made my way here... Whatever accounts for my different approach to posting, Australian culture won't be it...
There are some auto-biographical issues that may account for some of the difference: I attended a US university with a somewhat one-sided gender tilt, have spent a reasonable time working professionally in fields that are still overwhelmingly male, have an academic specialisation that still tends to be heavily male, etc.: basically, I'm used to matching it up with the boys...
Australia does, though, have a different culture around gender - but the difference is complex - the distinction is qualitative, not quantitative. So, for example, incredibly crass statements about gender will be made in professional contexts here - things that fear of litigation would generally prevent in the US: I've had to sit through meetings where it was explained that women don't make good managers due to their emotional nature, for example - "present company excluded, of course"... At the same time, the level of garden-variety, day-to-day physical harassment and recourse to threats of gender violence is much lower (in my personal experience, of course - I'm not trying to generalise about any kind of average experience). So I find that I experience many more annoying situations around gender here, but far fewer frightening ones...
The other thing I should note, of course, is that, while it's easy to look up my gender and while I will raise it contextually myself, where it's directly relevant to the conversation, still: as I've posted here before, I deliberately don't use my first name so that my gender is not easily and explicitly marked. This generally means that, unless someone has interacted with me for a while, they'll default to the assumption that I'm male (I've had people write extended critiques of some of the material posted on my blog, addressed to "Mr. Pepperell"...).
I've done this because I notice a distinct difference in how I'm treated online, if I'm not perceived as female - at least by casual interlocutors. It gets really tired, really fast, when someone doesn't engage with your ideas, but instead flirts, or proposes marriage, or patronises, or calls you a gendered epithet when they get annoyed, or speculates about your sexuality, or makes some kind of rape threat to try to drive you out of a discussion... When I have posted under a more markedly female monniker, all of these things have happened. And they were not particularly rare...
If other women have had even slightly similar experiences - or if, based on their real life experiences, they expect such things to happen, or if they have watched such things happen to others - then it's not really much of a wonder if there is a gender disparity among posters - even on a blog like this one, where I wouldn't expect any particular issues...
I don't mean to imply that everyone needs to have had such extreme experiences - there are other factors: gender disparities in how much expertise someone feels they need before they can contribute to a discussion; differential preferences for particular styles of discussion, etc. Different things can contribute - to the point that they can undermine even really active attempts to make the forum accessible to a wide range of posters...
** rant endeth now **
Posted by: N. Pepperell | Wednesday, 01 November 2006 at 11:14 PM
I really don't think "distinct loss of clarity" is the problem. Some of your subjects--not all or even most--are just over my head, and I don't think you always want to be aiming so low. Next year I'll be in grad school. Then we'll talk. And I'll still need you to explain Foucault to me.
Posted by: Liz Y. | Thursday, 02 November 2006 at 12:09 AM
I've only lurked here a handful of times, when Bitch PhD or somebody has a link to you.
I'm a woman, and the way I relate to blogs and bloggers is that if I like it enough to read regularly, I'll write comments, too, and might send the occasional e-mail. If I don't feel motivated to comment, I'm probably not going to read it too often.
I've heard a lot of people say they don't leave comments because they didn't have anything new to add, or because they felt intimidated by the level of discourse. Me, I always think I've got something worthwhile to say, and I don't intimidate easily. I suspect many people read blogs like they read magazines—without interaction.
I write one blog that gets very few comments from men and a modest number of comments from a fairly consistent group of the same women. Then I've got a crossword blog that probably has a lot of women lurking, but about 80% of the commenters are men. I don't know why that's the case.
Posted by: Orange | Thursday, 02 November 2006 at 09:26 AM
I'm not a frequent commenter on any blog, mostly because blog-reading is a guilty pleasure and a huge procrastination technique (I should be writing an article right now). To consciously comment would be to acknowledge that I'm doing that, instead of work.
No one has ever been very hostile to me on academic blogs (religious blogs, on the other hand, are just plain mean in their comments threads). But here's one anecdote -- I *love* The Weblog's Tuesday Hatred and Friday Confessional, I think those posts do something no other blog does, in a wonderful weird, resonant way that really changes the meaning of blogging.
I used to post comments on Tuesdays and Fridays pretty regularly. And it's a format that doesn't really require interactive responses -- you just post, and in general the next person comes alongs and posts something entirely different. But after a few months, I began to get paranoid that actually, everyone posting comments knew each other, and I was just some random street person who'd stumbled in, and everyone else reading was thinking "Who IS this person, and when will this person stop posting?" So I stopped posting even though it was a paranoia that came from no actual evidence on the blog.
This does seem anecdotally to support Pica's supposition that women lurkers might not post because they grow uncomfortable in the absence of dialogue.
But I hate Carol Gilligan and I always detested group work.
Posted by: prefer not to say | Monday, 13 November 2006 at 10:47 AM
prefer not to say, I find it strange that you don't consider yourself a regular commenter. Your pseudonym is familiar to me from, well, pretty much everywhere I comment. So either you comment more than you think you do or I'm unusually perspicacious. (I think we all know which must be the case.) I say that not to chastise you, or accuse you of procrastination, but because your comments leave an impression. Even if you're not aware of their substance, it's there.
That said, I stopped commenting on the Tuesday Hatred and Friday Confessional for much the same reason—it seemed like I was always on the outside of a community, not like a random stranger so much as a fringe figure in a high school popularity contest. Never invited anywhere but allowed to sit at the right tables, with the right people, even though they spoke exclusively to each other in a language I could hardly understand...
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Tuesday, 14 November 2006 at 03:54 PM
I definitely prefer to think of my reticence (or rather, my clearly distorted perception of my reticence -- I think I post every time the subject of reticence comes up, which means I might actually post compulsively, for hours at a time, daily) as a vestige of my abysmal high school social skills than as a product of gender.
Maybe you should organize a survey to ascertain the levels of high school popularity reached by your lurkers, versus those of your regular commenters (but how would you control for perception versus reality?)
Posted by: prefer not to say | Wednesday, 15 November 2006 at 03:05 PM
The answer to that one is easy: do a survey of the perception of high school popularity among your lurkers and regular posters... ;-P
Posted by: N. Pepperell | Wednesday, 15 November 2006 at 05:09 PM
I read this blog to upset myself, and will de-lurk to explain why.
I got a GED and 2 years of community college, but am attracted to ideas, and read high-falutin blogs for pleasure while knowing I just skim the surface while absorbing what I can, and that I'd be a fool to try to add to the conversation.
I am also diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness. I spent 2 decades in psychodynamic psychotherapy; all my treaters were neo-Freudians, and what they did with me has kept me on the planet. I wish I could say the same for dead people I've known with similar traumatic histories who were subjected to interventions based on current cognitive and neurobiological methods.
I understand the economic appeal of cognitive treatment verses long-term and intensive psychodynamic therapy, what I don't understand is its cachet among theoreticians.
So yeah, I come here with a sense of portent, looking for clues, and perhaps accountability.
Posted by: flawedplan | Saturday, 02 December 2006 at 06:22 AM
flawedplan, I'm not sure why you'd deliberately want to upset yourself, but I'm happy/saddened to be of service.
That said, I think you mistake my criticisms of psychoanalysis for a criticism of talk therapy tout court. What I mean is, to criticize the dominance of psychoanalytic thinking in academia isn't to discount the importance of talk-therapy in a therapeutic environment.
I think psychoanalysis can work, just not that it has exclusive access to success. If it does, we don't know why it does. The short answer, then, is that I think talk-therapy can be effective without resorting to the Freudian family drama, Jungian archetypes, &c. If those do work, I think that has less to do with the theory itself and more to do with the commitment required in the therapeutic situation.
Also, psychoanalytic empahsis on repressed memory sometimes has a profoundly negative effect on the patient. It's an art -- one which can be practiced effectively -- with pretensions of science. To the extent that it's an art, I have no objection to it. It's the claims to science that bother me.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Saturday, 02 December 2006 at 03:14 PM