My Favorite "About" Blurb & Outsiderness
I had lunch today here in Seattle with Lee LeFever, recently returned from his year long around the world trip with his partner (in life and now in business) Sachi. Lee mentioned he wanted to be in touch with Seattle based communities and throw some of his focus locally. I thought of him when I read, via the Seattle Mindcamp mailing list came notice of a Weird Genius Real Science Party. That was interesting. Turns out the party is hosted by the Seattle Outsider Project. I am fascinated by "outsiderness," particularly in the context of distributed communities, so I had to know more. I trolled aruond till I found this:
SOAP - seattle outsider artist project"ABOUT US:
Brilliant. But it spoke to something deeper.
The Seattle Outsider Artist Project (SOAP) is a Washington State non-profit for the advancement of marginal art by marginal people, art by non-artists, non-art by artists, and undifferentiated creative proliferation in the community. Please contact us immediately if you feel like you fit into any of these categories. "
Many times over the past years when I have gone to F2F gatherings of one of my distributed (i.e. we live all over the world and mostly connect online) communities, there is this strange thing that surfaces. Most everyone things they are an outsider in the group, or on the perphery. And when they say this, everyone looks at them aghast and says, "but I think you are an insider!"
I don't recall in primarily F2F groups seeing this happen with the regularity it happens online. There is something in the experience that has us telling ourselves the story in our heads that we are not fully "in." Whatever "in" means. Does it have to do with labels? With the all the garbage and wasted energy we place on "expertise?" With the disembodied experience of online interaction?
Anyway, it was lovely to see SOAP celebrating outsiderness with cheek and love. But I still wonder why it is so easy to feel like and outsider. And why it matters (or not)?
Questions. I've got no answers.
posted by Nancy White at 2:13 PM
3 Comments:
Insightful. Perhaps the popularity of the blogging world aside from the vast source of information that is out there, there is a sense of being an insider on all sorts of things that normally we wouldn't be. Being an insider I think speaks to our desire to feel accomplished, connected and respected. Thru the web it's possible to cultivate this perhaps.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for making such a supreme effort to thank each and ever one of your commentors, of which I was one and came late to the table. I appreciate being acknowledged. Nice to drop now and then.
Anyone with an Italian handle related to food has to be a kindred soul! :-)
Now, on to insider/outsiderness and blogging.
I felt very outsider as a blogger until I started running into people who said, "hey, I read your blog." For quite a while I had the sense that I was writing and thinking out loud, and some of my friends were indulging me by commenting.
It took connection with people I did not know to felt like somehow I had a degree of legitimacy as a blogger. For me, it was also about seeing my place not in the overall blogosphere, but in a much smaller niche related to my areas of interest.
So belonging can be a very intimate thing in a small group of people. Insidnerness is easier then.
Insiderness in the larger world, and blogosphere... well, I'll leave that to the A-Listers!
Thanks for doing a little research on my behalf!
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