Open Diary

Open Diary is a website that allows you to bare all your most secret thoughts and feelings to the entire world behind an anonymous sceen name. People can provide feedback on your entries as well. A friend of mine sent me the link because she had a diary and said I could read it but I felt weird doing it, like some kind of peeping tom, but the site is like a bad car wreck--you want to look away but you just can't. For one thing, a lot of the people who write these things are messed up teenage girls (I have yet to see a diary kept by a male on this site) who like to detail all the suicide-attempt drama online. For another thing, many of these diaries are full of poor logic and grammar and can be good for a laugh. Then you realize that you're reading other people's diaries and think that you should get a life.

I am male, I have a diary on OD. It's a wonderful act of exhibitionism, there is a surprising sense of relief when you spill your guts to a medium accessible by everyone. That is one of reason's that most of the content is so grim. "I had a good day," isn't really something that provides excitement to people, and it's also not usually in the category of things you have to get of your chest. It can provide a nice base of unrequited support as with a good story you can get copious amounts of sympathy from anonymous people from around the world, albeit they are located primarily in North America.

There are a few writers at OD who, like xant below me, manage to get a reader base with “I had a good day” entries, or to be more accurate, everyday life entries. They come in two forms. There are the short, point form, “I did this, this and this,” writers. Who tend to be young females, of the teeny-bopper variety. The others are good writers, who have points, and give their day meaning in the telling. The latter type are unfortunately, few and far between.

As another OD male here, I can safely claim to be one of the people who has many regular readers with my "I had a good day" entries. It's all in the quality of writing, the sense of humor, just like E2.

OD has a viral effect which is fascinating to watch because you know (in the anonymous sense) who is leaving you notes. You can click through their name and start reading their diary, and then click through the people who read their diary. Pretty soon the people reading their diary are also reading your diary, and it becomes a big Ponzi scheme.

This becomes especially outrageous if, like me, you have someone from the real world find and read your diary, and then they start their own diary, about you.

In early 2002, Open Diary changed to a pay site, with a limit of 10000 users. However, there is now Free Open Diary, which is a lot like the old Open Diary.

Unfortunately, there is a ridiculous amount of pop-ups, and their frequency makes the site difficult to stomache. Also, they have stopped accepting new members, and delete diaries if they are not updated within a fortnight.

Many people have switched to alternative sites, such as Diaryland or Livejournal.