Among my internet time-wasters are a small handful of photo-heavy blogs maintained by total strangers. I follow a couple of them on a daily basis, and others I check in on every other week or so. Almost all of the bloggers are friends and link to one another’s websites, so it’s easy to navigate from one to the rest.

(I’m not linking to them here because I like my lurker status and don’t want to alert the blog owners. FWIW, there is a link to one of the blogs under “Excursions” on the right-hand side of the Greatwhatsit home page. Let’s say its title is a Nietzschean joke.)

For me, these blogs provide narrative and aesthetic pleasure throughout the days and weeks. As anyone who has ever been addicted to a book or TV series can tell you, narrative is a powerful drug. I just can’t get through a day without checking one or more of these blogs, sometimes more than once. I’ll return in hopes of an update or to dig into the catalog of older posts, catching up on the back story.

The people who appear in these photos and stories — the friends, lovers, and families of the bloggers — are, to me, characters in an ever-evolving intricate tale, parts of which are laid out clearly on the screen, but parts of which I have had to puzzle out and put together for myself. I can tell you many of their names, workplaces, and hangouts. I can tell you when they’re out of town and where they’ve gone. I can tell you whom they’re dating, betrothed or married to.

I can tell you the bands they’re in or used to be in, where they exhibit their art (for yes, almost all of them are artists or musicians, and some are both), and where they get their coffee. I can tell you who has an uncle who was sexually abused as a kid (and who did the abusing), who used to be a crackhead or junkie (there are several), who has a book deal, who just had a friend dump him, and whose wife left him not long ago, which was the inspiration for an elaborate pair of tattoos. Some are major, some are minor, but all together they form a web of characters in a story I just love to follow.

I can’t help but feel like an intruder and a voyeur, even though I know that these blogs are public and, in fact, an invitation into the lives on display. If they didn’t want other people looking at their photos and reading their personal stories, the participants wouldn’t post them on the internet, right? All the same, I have turned these human beings into characters in my own personal soap opera and it sometimes feels a little creepy.

I was initially drawn to the “hub” blog (or maybe I should call it the “gateway”) because of the interesting name and the excellent photos of really cool people and events. The first post I read was a set of photos of an amazing event I had wanted to attend. Alas, it was in NY, so I missed it. I was glad to find the photos and short but substantial descriptions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymqTBePX6Xk[/youtube]

Who was this cool person who did cool things I wanted to do? At first I thought it was a woman who lived in NY; there was something feminine about the artistic framing of the photos. I returned the following day to find out more. After a couple days, I figured out the author/owner was in fact a guy who lives in LA. Intrigued by the artsy yet unpretentious photos of cool, underground-y events, I continued to come back, eventually branching out to learn more about his circle of friends as they saunter from gallery openings to warehouse shows to after parties to late-night meals at Canter’s.

The first time I saw him in the flesh was at a show; I turned around and there he was, side by side with one of his best friends, another photo blogger. I had a secret thrill. They could never recognize me, but I knew so much about them, and they appeared to me so familiar, like movie or TV stars.

Also, I felt like I was at the coolest event in town that night. I mean, he was there, right? I was validated. I was a cool kid.

But not really, of course, because in that moment I was the nerdy wallflower who watches what the cool kids do and only feels cool when basking in the overflow of their limelight. Their stardom was sealed, and in that moment I was sealed off from them.

Since then, I’ve had random sightings of these familiar faces all over town and have even been attending some events where I knew they would be. There are announcements for these events — art openings and shows — on their blogs, asking, even imploring the public to come on down. I’ve had great fun going, and they’ve all been things that if I had seen a notice for I would have wanted to go anyway. Still, I can’t help but feel a little like a stalker, what with the inequity between my knowledge of them and their complete ignorance of me.

Recently, a fellow Whatsitter who also follows the central blog in question (but not as obsessively as I) saw one of the key players in public, hailed him, told him she has seen him on the blog, and then asked to have a photo taken with him. To me, this is the absolute last thing I’d ever do: anathema to my experience of reading the blog.

The thought of puncturing the fourth wall — really just a thin, flexible film of Saran wrap — on this amazing and delightful drama that spools out on my computer screen and in my city dismays and confuses me. Why would I want to interact with the actors in the best show in town? Why would I ever want to know them as real human beings with problems, irritations, and foibles like the rest of us? It could only spoil my pleasure.

And you, o lurkers of TGW! What you must know of me while I stumble and stammer on the other side of the two-way mirror between us. Gaze freely, I say, for I have other things to watch and care not a whit if you should turn me into an entertainment to while away some time at work.