The social self in writing

Navneet Alang compares the sense of self and social we get from blogging to a monk who has written words on a scroll for the first time:

Perhaps it’s my typical hyperbole, but I like to think of people who write on the web as new versions of that monk, suddenly struck by the fact that the page and its markings have done things to their self and their sense of it. And I dunno’, something about that fills me with hope. Perhaps it isn’t that the web has frayed the threads of the social; maybe it’s that it has projected the entire mess onto a screen we can all see. And for all the disconnection that has engendered, by taking the social and putting it somewhere, perhaps it will also help us confirm that we exist to others and ourselves.

I don't necessarily feel that we need the web to confirm that we exist to others and ourselves, but Alang hits on a very important point here: it's not just the public permanence of web writing--should you choose that your web writings be permanently public--that integrates the self into the social; it's the social pushing back as well. By putting it all out there, you automatically invite a secondary sense of self into your writing. And it's fun to try and find that secondary "you" to see what he's thinking.