Dear Diary

raditionally, people who keep diaries prefer to keep them private -- if not forever, at least while they're still alive. Times have changed. The Internet has inspired a new generation of diarists who write their innermost thoughts hoping that thousands, maybe even millions -- or at least two or three -- wired readers will tune in.

Justin Clouse. (Photograph by Steve Krongard)

Justin Clouse is a 20-year-old student and Web-page designer at Boston University. Since starting his online diary in 1995, he has received more than 5,000 letters and messages, mostly from other gay men who tell him that his diary keeps them from feeling alone. Justin hopes that his diary will help him meet a redheaded man. An excerpt:

"Why an online search for my redheaded knight? Well, redheads aren't really common. . . . They aren't rare, but definitely not common. . . . Combined with the fact that I'm looking for a gay redhead, the WWW seemed like the place I was most likely to find one. I've done the math, and only 1 in 1,000 people even fit the redheaded, gay, and male parts of what I want. I doubt I'll bump into one of those one in a thousand on the street, and, thus, I have to seek every route available."
-- Justin Clouse

Carolyn Burke, 30, lives in a small flat above a Toronto, Canada, appliance firm. A partner in an Internet consulting firm, she began posting "Carolyn's Diary" in January 1995. (Photograph by Joe Traver)

An excerpt:

"The rules and regs of society seem arbitrary. Damn it. In one sense they are. These rules are the mother-of-pearl emissions of the social oyster (Warning: Don't swallow raw on pain of internal rot). This mold, one-time-only social lubricant removes a lot of the friction that we'd have in a unregulated or unsocialized bunch of people. No sand in them there shells. The question I'm left with, though, is whether any pearls at all are created. I think not. Smoothed people are created. The road to power in the '90s is found in a lack of disagreement and a plethora of approval vibes. Smooth, indeed. And hard to have a mind of one's own. To quote (sort of) a guy I was talking with yesterday evening, to learn how to be an individual, most people join a group. They learn the pattern of the moment . . . all identically. And then they can feel like individuals. Heh."
-- Carolyn Burke

An excerpt:

"When Bob was ready to leave for work this morning, he came downstairs and found me curled up on the dining-room floor, surrounded by little snippets of magnetic words. He said, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'Barb sent me a present -- a Shakespearean insult kit -- thou monkey-faced, carp-eyed bag of toad puke.' He said, 'Okay, then why are you on the floor?' And I said, 'Well, thou insolent, dog-headed clotpoll (clotpoll?), I spilled them, so I got down on the floor and stayed there.' Yes. I like this."
-- Willa Cline

Bryon Sutherland, 26, recently left his job as a computer network specialist to pursue a full-time writing career. The Denton, Texas, resident credits the response he's gotten from readers of his onliner diary for "pushing me out the door." (Photograph by Shelly Katz)

Willa Cline, 42, works as a legal assistant and lives in Kansas with her cat, Dona, and her husband, Bob. (Photograph by John Sleezer)

An excerpt:

"Do you know how the elastic in your socks works? As long as your socks stay up, do you care? I tried to pick a question that most people can't answer but that no cares about. That's exactly the way I feel about the existence of God. I can't answer the question, but the world seems to work just fine anyway, so I don't see any need to work on the solution. That's not to say that I didn't spend years investigating it. Like most people who have shrugged off religion, I studied it quite a lot before I came to a conclusion."
-- Bryon Sutherland

http://www.kool.com/mylife.htm
http://carolyn.org/~clburke/Diary.htm#today
http://darknet.com/wcline/
http://www.master.net.bryon/