Blogs as hypertexts

One of Jill Walker's ideas that I sort of struggled with was her claim that blogs could collectively function as a sort of hypertext--collaborating to form an authored work.

I personally think of the authorship question in blogs as stemming from the blogger/commentator relationship--the creation of a text that talks back (think Ong and Plato from the beginning of the year). Walker claims in Distributed Narrativethat "the story of a weblogger is described is [sic] by the story being told by several different narrators on their independent sites." She expands a bit more on this in the Feral article, discussing the blog-diarist Justin Hall, specifically her view that his blog could be read as a hypertext through many different lenses. For instance she claims that "I could choose to limit it by authorship, as Foucault suggests, in which case I would choose to look at everything Hall has written. Or I could choose to limit by the main character in the narrative, Justin Hall, in which case I would look at his girlfriends' blogs and other writings about him as well."

I'm not sure if I agree with her that a blog can be a hypertext, that it is a story. That seems to me to be taking something essentially blog-gy and discarding it--something to do with the idea of a blog as a way of keeping informed--about someone's life, about news topics, about issues that you identify/empathize with. The idea of a blog as fiction feels pretty antithetical to me--although she claims that Rob Wittig has a book blog that I'll have to check out sometime in the future.

But, antithetical as it may feel, I wonder if the conflict I feel isn't somehow misplaced. (lots of modifiers in that sentence, sorry.) Because what is a blog except a text situated in relationship to other texts through links--a loose definition of a hypertext? Walker may be right. And with this sort of balancing effect that Walker seems to be promoting--the examining of the other sides of the story, such as the narratives (blogs) of Hall's girlfriends--seems to allow the author to establish a greater veracity. If we look at Justin Hall's life on his blog alone and then through this greater lens, we're somehow able to minimize/destroy that Holden-Caulfield-esque unreliable narrator. This idea of a blog as a text--blogs as informers--seems to point perhaps towards greater accuracy/truth?

Anyway, these are all just some disjointed ideas. One last thought: using blogs as fiction--does that relate back to our ideas of voyeurism and surveillance? I.e would it be creepy to read the blogs Hall's break-up with his girlfriend--both sides--especially not knowing the people?