Personal Diaries, Minus the Locks

Dave Haole has three loves in life: football, reading and feeling sorry for himself. A clerk at a local law library, he has a problem with depression and only recently stopped drinking alcohol and smoking pot. He has a slight stutter and “a lot of issues.” And you can read all about them on his Web site, called Stark Raving Mad (https://members.tripod.com/~haoledave).

Haole is one of thousands of individuals who’ve typed in their life stories and sent them into that void called the World Wide Web. Known as journalers, or diarists, they are drawn to the medium for any number of reasons--the immediate feedback, a sense of community.

Like traditional diaries, Web journals are extremely personal and brutally honest. But the similarities end there because online diaries are not at all private. They are available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

“You’re usually alone in your room when you write these. Sometimes you forget that anybody can read them,” says Kymm Zuckert, a 34-year-old accountant and online journaler who runs the Open Pages Web ring from her New Jersey apartment.

Open Pages (https://www.diarist.net) was established in 1996 as a guide to the ever-growing “scribe tribe--netizens who [post] journals, diaries, daily ramblings and sporadic babblings on the Web.” It is now home to more than 800 online diarists who write about everything imaginable, from physical ailments and fistfights to being single and finding a job--in sometimes graphic and / or mind-numbing detail. Many sites list a cast of frequently referenced characters and include photos, even Webcams. They’re a voyeur’s fantasy come to life.

Sixteen-year-old Melissa Lo is a junior at an L.A. prep school. She plays on the varsity water polo team and sometimes cries when she gets home from school. “Functions” (https://members.xoom.com/irisgrrl) is her Web site, which she updates roughly once a week with her dreams of attending Princeton and whatever fantasies she has about boys at school. She lists Jewel, the Dave Matthews Band and Ben Folds Five as her favorite musicians. She even describes what she’s wearing.

Some might call this over-sharing, but writers and readers are attracted to this online exhibitionism.

“It’s just really exciting to find out what happens to these people every day. They’re like books that never end,” says Zuckert, whose site can be found at https://www.hedgehog.net/mightykymm.

“It’s an addiction,” agrees Amanda Erickson, who spends half an hour each day reading journals before work. A 23-year-old part-time Web designer, she started her L.A. Stories Web journal (https://www.home.earthlink.net/~ilsa/lastories) a year ago when she first moved to the city.

“I never really wanted to come here,” says Erickson, who lives in Mar Vista with her husband, who has a job there. Her site gives her some purpose in being here, she says. “It makes me go out and do things I wouldn’t normally do, and gives me a better attitude.”

No one knows when the online diary phenomena began exactly, though it’s believed to have started in 1995. It may not be coincidence that as the print zine scene began to die in the mid-’90s, Web journaling began to take off. Its popularity has even led to Web sites about Web journals. Http://www.metajournals.com is a comprehensive guide to Web-based journals.