Holy Buck, Fatman!

Reader SoSnarky pointed me to a rather interesting article written by NYT columist Emily Gould in which she shares an anecdote about blogging. The post in question described someone that she had known and loved dearly who asked her to take down a post that he felt painted him in a negative light. She didn’t feel that way and stood her ground to keep the post, going as far to hand him an ultimatum. In her opinion, the posts were a part of her world and an important part of her life. In his opinion, she was seeking online gratification by sharing her view of someone else negatively, as if her story was meant to bait trolls in some way. He wanted it gone. She, in the name of Art and creativity decided that it was staying. Does the internet take away our sense of privacy these days? Do bloggers find art in the every day banter that goes on in their lives or have we taken it too far and lost our sense of filtering and common decency?

I find Emily’s description of Henry’s “Online Presense” is the same as my own. If I were to tell any of you readers who KNOW my real name to google it and see what they bring up, they’ll get a competitve runner in Tenneesee and a Neurosurgeon. (i’ll take credit for the Neurosurgeon…tee hee!) Nothing about Mrs. Fatman in Baltimore City. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Google–I BEAT you. HA!

Perhaps my reasoning for this is I grew up around the birth of the ‘net and spent a VAST majority of my life on it. Back in the day, No one used their real names, meeting people from the internet was STRICTLY reserved for urber nerds and serious perverts. Gamers who played MUD’s, Hackers and computer enthusitsts spent time exchanging chats through Internet Relay Chats. If you wanted to exchange personal information and expand your relationship with someone, you did it via e mail. Real names just weren’t used. I decided, partially because of this indoctrination and partially because of my exoperience with Domestic Violence, that I would never attach my real name to anything on the internet.

Because of this personal decision, I can write about nearly anything I wanted and keep the players of my world completely anonymous. For all anyone knows, my world could be entirely made up. Those who know me personally know that my personal anecdotes, when I write about them are entirely true. However–real names aren’t ever used.

Emily’s decision to bear all for the internet is hers and hers alone. Her generation is the first generation to really grow up with the ‘net and bearing all for everyone to see has become common place. This has become so common that we have blurred art and privacy, trading one for the other. Her disregard for Henry’s desire for privacy was a lesson she obviously, at the end of her post, learned later on. To quote:

After a standoff, he conceded that I should be allowed to put the post back up. As he sulked in the other room, I retyped what I’d written, feeling vindicated but slightly queasy for reasons I didn’t quite understand yet.

For reasons she didn’t quite understand yet. Perhaps those reasons are potential employers goggling you, the rise of misinformation in the media, the use of blogs as “news” rather than what they really are: a collection of a bunch of different EDITORIAL OPINIONS. There are many reasons for the desire to not be portrayed as a doofus, homophobe, racist because ONE (and all it takes is ONE) reader “just had to be there” to really get the anecdote.

We have lost a sense of own privacy these days. for some people, ANYTHING is blog fodder and ANYTHING can be exploited. Yes, Legions of Mommy Bloggers, I’m Talk to your stupid asses. You are perpetuating this loss of personal filters. I have written about my own child on here and afterwards, I was asked by a close friend if that was the right thing to do. While I didn’t go into great detail about her situation, It was enough. The fact that she is older and can read this blog herself has driven me to think about what I am going to say before I write it. If I do decide to write about it, she may be cited as a small example, but nothing in great detail. If I have something to say about motherhood and child rearing, perhaps I can get the point across without exploiting my child’s actions. Many see the mommyblogging thing as a great feat in feminism. I disagree. I think we need to have a sense of privacy in a world that anything goes and we need to pass this on to our children so they, too can use the internet responsibly and not get caught up in the selfishness of exploitation of others and themselves for personal gratification. After all, Emily does say at the end, “For reasons she hardly understood.” Perhaps she understands them now.