Blog Fiction - Truth or Fake?

Truth or Fake?

Some blog fiction takes the form of a fake blog by a fictitious person that may or may not announce its own fictional status. Many "non-fiction" blogs may likewise be elaborate sets of fictionalized personae, a situation which points to the seemingly limitless possibilities for identity production in cyberspace. Therefore, it is difficult to determine how many fictionalized "real" blogs there are on the Internet. Some adopt a portraiture style, trying to depict fictional lives or people, some engage in mock diaries, such as Fake Steve Jobs in which an anonymous author writes from the perspective of three fictional characters. Some attempt to tell serialized stories like a syndicated magazine (called a serialblog). Some blogs, such as Belle de Jour, have been accused of being fictional, with mixed results.

Though a relatively new genre, blog fiction has begun to develop its own set of conventions, whose antecedents can be found in innovative fiction such as The Journalist by Harry Mathews. It is common for fictional blogs to link into real world articles, or even other faked articles, to construct the illusion of a character within a world.

Within the realm of critical theory and literature, blog fiction establishes a critical conversation with Roland Barthes' conception of a "reality effect" or '"realistic effect" (effet de réel), which posits that the accumulation of redundant, superfluous and minute details within historiography or a fictional narrative may not forward the plot yet persuasively signifies verisimilitude.