Sunday, February 15, 2009
Blog Anonymity
This blog is a pretty private place for me. My audience has been a few close friends and a sibling or two. Until recently. I sort-of decided to be brave and put it out for a few more folks in the effort to let people see who I really am. Scary, but freeing, really. Now all of my siblings know where this blog is, and a few others. Today, I was talking to a friend at church who asked me about my flickr account. I was surprised he had found me. We started talking about facebook and blogs and when he asked me if I had one, I told him I would send him my blog address. But I am worried that some information will be read about someone I have written about who, although are unnamed on this blog, will be recognized. So, what to do? Do I censor my posts here to accomodate possible readers? What would you do?
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That's a tricky one. I would maybe censor my posts but I think there are ways that you can still be honest and say what you want to say; like maybe changing circumstances, places, dates, etc.
The problem is that if you offend someone then they could tell their friends and you might be inundated with nasty comments. Even though you approve all comments, it might be really icky getting nasty comments.
It's a hard choice to make. I guess what it comes down to is a really about transparency. Transparency is about being able to let people see who you really are, and I've really loved how you've been doing that lately, like in your post about your neighbor. I liked the balance there: the post was about a circumstance, but the honesty was about you.
There was a time I posted something on a message board and I totally changed the circumstances and people (I gave no names) in order to say what I needed to say. I was still able to express my feelings. That said, I did have some scared feelings about the person I was talking about being able to recognize herself!
Then there's always just the possiblity of saying what you want to say w/o names or anything and letting the chips fall where they may.
I suppose you could always put in a disclaimer about it, like "if you think I'm talking about you, I'm probably not". Haha.
I've rambled on and don't even know if I've made any sense at all. Please feel free to edit this post!
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