One thing I've noticed since I've used Firefox is that, by using multiple tabs to read multiple blogs, if I have two blogs open at once that happen to have the same template, I'll sometimes mistake one blog for the other. That's always weird. Case in point: just now I have Unclaimed Territory and Et al. open in adjacent tabs. Both Glenn Greenwald and Dorcasina are using the same template, and I thought I was reading Unclaimed while actually reading Et al.
Not a big deal (and I'm certainly not complaining or saying that every blogger should have a unique site design), but this does point out something interesting to me: the way personality figures into blogging. It's often claimed that it's just the writing and the arguments that count, but I find myself trying to place the current top post at Et al. in the context of what I generally read at Unclaimed. So instead of attending to Dorcasina's actual points about sex and gender issues (the subject of her top post), I'm skimming it and thinking, "Why the hell is Glenn Greenwald writing about this stuff?" It took me a minute to realize my error, whereupon I "recalibrated" and read Dorcasina's post for what it was actually saying.
Has anyone else encountered this phenomenon? What should we call it? How about "blog-template induced dyslexia"?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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