Personal friendship with bloggers whose blogs I read...

-
It's been in and out of my head, so let me put it down, this has always been a tricky issue for me.


Reading somebody's "honest" blog gives an insight about an individual which few other mediums can. Most of the time the blogs I read are of people I do not or cannot know personally, not that I select them on that criterion but just that I'm generally lucky on this count. But every once in a while, there is a friend whose blog I suddenly discover, or there is a blogger with whom, due to new circumstances, I'm face to face everyday.

This creates a peculiar situation for me.

First, a mundane problem in the second scenario - I honestly do not know what to talk to that individual. Most friendships start formally with the "hi, hello" stuff till it progresses to deeper levels. But in this case, even without saying hi once I know quite a lot about the the individual, so starting with that formal stuff becomes very hypocritical atleast to me while I just don't know the individual personally enough to talk anything else.

One thing which I make sure is that the individual somehow knows that I read his/her blog (especially those blogs where I don't comment; in fact I've written comments on many blogs just as a way of informing that I'm a reader of the blog.)

Secondly, and more importantly for me, I run into a moral confusion. Even though information on an individual's blog is in the public domain, very few actually read blogs, so more often than not you have some special understanding about the blogger, which most others do not. But morally, are you justified in using whatever insight you might possess till the means is in public knowledge. (Wouldn't you be like those immoral analysts who exploit insider info or analysis info instead of making the knowledge public or helping the markets?)

So how do I respond to this?

I either reduce my friendship with the individual to the most formal; lesser the interaction, lesser is the probability of use/misuse of any insight I might have gained through reading of the blog.
or
I stop reading his/her blog completely.
It is always a difficult choice when I desire friendship with the person both as a blogger and as a person; I have sometimes foresaken many prospective great friendships for this reason; in other cases the joy of reading those rare pieces of brilliant blog writing.

And sometimes this has led to the most ridiculous and awkward situations for me, when one fine morning I have a completely different perspective of an acquaintance and have nothing to talk to him/her, or some similar queer thing.

It is just that when you're good personal friends with a person, reading or responding on blogs becomes either superficial or sycophantic or otherwise flows into the personal relationship with him/her affecting it, which you don't want to happen.
But if the communication doesn't flow into the personal friendship, the personal friendship itself becomes hollow.

As usual, I don't have an optimal solution to this confusion, probably I think too much...

I know I'm sounding wierd, but for people who've faced these situations (or those (prospective) friends of mine) , I'm sure they would know what I'm talking about.