2004-09-09 - 11:34 p.m.

that again? yes, that again

Revisiting the overbeaten topic of online diaries, anonymity, privacy, honesty and self-censorship (because it�s a topic I continually rethink).

Miss Manners wrote a column this summer about blogs. I can't help it, I like Miss Manners. She preaches etiquette up to and EXcluding becoming a doormat. And she can be quite sarcastic, without being rude. I love that.

Anyway - this is part of what she had to say (full text here):

Yes, children, we did used to have blogs. We called them diaries, and they got us into almost as much trouble as yours will get you.

The impulse to record one's every thought, feeling, opinion and experience long predates the home computer. [...]

Friends are not the ideal receptacles for daily confidences [...], as it does not take long to discover. Their minds wander, causing them to misunderstand or forget what they were told. They are especially prone to forgetting they were told not to tell others. Their emotions don't always come out the way they were supposed to, and they make irritating remarks, such as "You're not being fair" or "I don't see what you're so upset about." Their loyalties shift, leaving them with choice material to use against the very person who supplied it.

Hence, the diary. It had an insatiable appetite for grudges, gossip, love affairs, cultural pronouncements, social criticism and whatever else one chose to put into it. It was the ideal companion, an eager and sympathetic listener who would never betray you in the present but hinted at helping you to fame in the future.

Web logs have a similar lure for those who keep them, with what seem like additional advantages. It is not only that they work faster technologically. They are supposed to supply fame and hordes of eager and sympathetic listeners in the present.

With a diary, the danger was that someone might sneak a peek at it or even steal it and expose one's secrets. With a blog, the fear is that nobody might do so.

[...] etiquette has no rule against people spreading unflattering gossip about themselves. Miss Manners would only caution those who do so that both social standards and personal circumstances often change, and they may not always be pleased to have this material floating around.

What is of concern to etiquette is the way bloggers write about other people. Miss Manners has a perhaps more realistic approach to gossip than those who condemn it absolutely, and then go on to more interesting subjects, such as who is doing what to whom. People will always talk about people.

The polite person at least gossips discreetly and without malice. Blogs do not qualify as being discreet. For those who must write down their critical observations about people they know, Miss Manners recommends a small blank book that comes with a lock and key and can be hidden in the sock drawer.

Of course, the first thing that's going to get me in trouble about this entry now is breaking copyright law to reproduce all that without permission. Oh well. I'll deal with that when Miss Manners sues me. (Don't you imagine that she'd just come to my house and give me a withering look of reproving disappointment, rather than sue me?)

Anyway... bold emphasis above is mine, emphasizing the bits of her column which I have confirmed for myself, the hard way. As far as what I write (or say) about myself, I've gone through the "why did you tell so and so I said that?" "oh, I didn't think you'd mind if I just told her" routine. The variation on that is the friend who teases me in public using something I've told her, then when asked why she'd embarrass me like that, says, "there's nothing embarrassing about that, it's cute!" Uh huh, because it's not about you! I've also gone through the situation of having someone get upset with me and thinking back on some of the potentially embarrassing things I've told that person in the past.

This is why I'm so freaked about anonymity, to the point of stupidity, like not even feeling free to include the name of my band. I'll tell you though, I found something the other day that didn't make me want to be more forthcoming in the future. I typed into a search engine the name of an event my band played at, to see if there was any news, and I found on the first page of results, the blog of someone I know, talking about getting ready to go to the event. I read that entry, and everything seemed perfectly nice and not like anything she'd want to try and hide, but I didn't read any more entries and I won't go back. Didn't seem right.

As for talking about other people, be they friends, acquaintances or co-workers, I'm super paranoid about saying anything. You don't say. No, really, I am. I just don't want someone to see that I secretly disagreed with them, or was upset with them, and have them get hurt feelings that I told the world and not them. Well, you know, "the world" - relative term. Also, I don't talk about things that may be upsetting me if I think it violates someone else's privacy - just doesn't seem right. If I can make them as anonymous as I try to make myself, then okay - but otherwise I don't like feeling as though I'm airing another person's dirty laundry against their will.

My husband is the exception. For one thing, I know him well enough to know what would bother him and what wouldn't, if he found out I wrote about it here. Anything that would actually hurt him, I don't write. Also, by the time I write about an incident here, it's generally all played out and moved from the realm of troublesome into the area of entertaining.

I've never thought that other people say too much though. When people can open up about themselves and not worry who knows who they are, well, God bless you for being able to be so vulnerable. I can't do it. I have sometimes worried for people's safety when I thought they were giving an awful lot of identifying information, but if that's your comfort zone, so be it. When they're talking about others, I've never read someone else's journal and thought, wow, they shouldn't have said that; that's unfair to someone else. I recognize that these are personal journals, not little courts of justice. But this is, after all, the world wide bleepin web, and sometimes if I feel there's the smallest possibility someone might be hurt over something I said, I just censor it. Now, if I think they might be pissed, sometimes that's okay. But not hurt.

I did specifically buy a paper journal, and a nice pen, for the more personal "no one else's eyes" stuff.... haven't christened it yet though.

Soon.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -