‘Cross The Breeze

I was reading a story the other day how (again) somebody posted something on the internet, then heard he shouldn’t have and pulled the post offline. Of course this didn’t go without people noticing it and they dug up the post of the the search engine’s cache. This made me think of how a blog in many ways resembles a tattoo, here’s why:

• Personal expression

Just like a tattoo, a blog is a way to express your thoughts, feelings, ideas, … about everything you can think of. You find both in all colors and shapes, languages etc. And you’ll find them both used by people out of all layers of the population, no matter what their level or interests are.

• Identification & status

Think of how tattoos where used (unfortunately) with the Jews during the holocaust, or how the Maori use it… or some criminal gangs. Tattoos are part a way of saying who you are, to what group you belong to and in many cases also what your status is in that group. Blogs aren’t that much different. From this blog you can tell at least to some extend who I am and with all the social ranking (Technorati and others) attached to it – even if you didn’t ask for it – there is a status system in place as well.

• Conversation starter

A tattoo, especially a really good one is a conversation starter pretty much like a blog is. When you see someone with a great tattoo you want to know where and why this person got it, what it means, how people react to it, etc… A good post on a blog is a bit the same, it’ll ignite people’s mind and quickly enough you’ll be in a conversation with people you know or don’t know about what you’ve just written.

• Infinite

Finally – and this is probably where most people thought of I guess – it’s pretty infinite. To use a famous Vegas quote: “what happens on the internet, stays on the internet” and although it might not mean exactly the same as what they meant in Vegas, it says pretty much what it means. Once something goes online, it’ll be there forever. Once a blogpost is there, don’t think you can delete it… meaning you could on your own system but that’s about it. Just like a tattoo, everything you do online is pretty much there forever. And now I know you can get rid of a tattoo, but it takes a lot of effort and time and you’ll always see some trace of it. I think that counts for the internet as well.

Maybe you can think of more, add them in the comments if you do.