Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

I’m No Solipsist

On the Internet, everybody knows you’re a dog. – By Michael Kinsley – Slate Magazine
The first person I knew who had a Web site of his own was a fellow Washington journalist. This was when many journalists were still just getting into e-mail, but the URL for this Web site quickly circulated around town and around the world. Why? Well, we were all impressed by the technological savvy. But we were absolutely astounded by the solipsism.

That really seems to me to be an incorrect usage of the word “solipsism”. Solipsism is the idea that there’s no way you can know for sure that the world outside your own mind is actually real. If someone were a solipsist, I think he’d be LESS likely to create a personal web page. After all, why spend your time reaching out to a world that may not even really exist?

Hm… and this writer (at slate.com) is an editor at the Guardian Limited! You’d think he’d know better. Solipsism isn’t the same thing as egotism — and “egotism” is most likely the word Kinsley really needed here.

Whatever.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been accused a couple of times (by people who know the difference between solipsism and egotism) of running a self-absorbed web site. My answer to that is always, Of course it’s self-absorbed! Of course it’s all about ME. It’s a blog, for Pete’s sake! The thing is, people don’t read my web site (and people DO read my site, by the way) because they necessarily care about me in any personal way. They read it because I’m occasionally interesting and/or entertaining. A blog is really more like being an actor than being an exhibitionist.

—-
The illustration for this slate.com article IS really cute, though.