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sherryillkI just read a NYT article from a former Gawker writer about her online life before and after Gawker as a blogger and it was pretty scary. I wondered if I could ever get to that point since I too like to maybe overshare at times on my LJ, talking about people in my life and things that have happened to me. I can’t say I have as much exposure as she did since even before Gawker she had a good amount of followers and I have only a handful but still, who is to say Hanawa, whom I’ve said some rather not nice things about, might not stumble onto my LJ and become offended? I guess I should be grateful it didn’t happen while I was still taking classes under her.
Oh, for those who aren't familiar with Gawker, it's a NYC based blogging site that posts rumors and gossip about people in the media's eye. And a lot of the times, they're rather harsh and critical in a not so very good way. I don't really frequent it because it's really not my thing but they have a pretty healthy following and if Emily is to be believed (and when one is being so candidly honest, one wants to believe her), also inspires stalkerish like tendencies in their readers.
Her experiences in blogging seem rather scary and almost like a movie, in that you feel as though it couldn't have possibly happened. But then you start to think and you start to recall all the instances of craziness that happen on the internet, all the wanks you've seen and how some writers are destroyed by faceless, vicious people online and you start to think that everything that she described must have actually occurred.
Her reasons for blogging are similar to my own, wanting some place, somewhere that has your own mark on it; something to show that you were there and you existed and that these things happened to you and what your own personal feelings were at the time. Oversharing seems inevitable because privacy seems to take a whole new meaning online and it's much more easily disregarded because when you post online, you're posting details to faceless, anonymous people whom you really don't know that well. That makes it seem okay at times, even when you know you would never talk like this to people you're not really familiar with in real life.
After reading this article, I'm infinitely glad that I don't have such a prolific online life as some people do. I don't want a huge following of readers, a couple hundred people on my flist and me on theirs. I don't think I would be very comfortable if that were so. The flist I have now is mostly dominated by communities and the small flist that I've accumulated during my last seven years here on LJ. And the fact that my flist is so small despite me being a long time LJ user comforts me that I probably won't fall into the same sort of trap that Emily did. She says the internet has changed since the time she wrote on her own blog and that's why she won't be able to go back to same sort of freedom and sense of community but after being online and that might be true as the internet is certainly not the same as it was a decade ago when I first started going online. Everything did seem much smaller as opposed this bottomless, endless pit that seems to house the internet. Hell, even a pit is the wrong metaphor seeing as it's more boundless and unconstrained. But despite that, I think it is possible to have a sense of community and belonging. Maybe it's too late for Emily as Emily to have that sort of feeling because of her past choices but I don't think I believe that either. That would be incredibly sad to think that in a place that is so wonderful (even if at times, not so wonderful and more hurtful) and so big, that one person can not carve out a place for themselves that feels absolutely right to them and not almost right.
I like to think of my LJ as that place for me and has been that place for me for some time now. I can't say I'm not like Emily because I do adore comments and I do read each and every one of them, despite not always responding to them. I have a hard time saying what I want to say and have a tendency to say the wrong things if I don't stop and think about them so I generally put a stop on myself before posting or responding to anything. And a lot of those times, I end up letting too much time elapse because I lost interest or the urgency fades and I end up forgetting about writing something so I don't. And I'll admit it, I censor myself at times. The really private stuff that I just can't bear to have other people knowing but still want to have some record of for myself, I post privately. The more delicate stuff that sometimes I can't delicately discuss sometimes get scrapped or amended. For the most part, I try not to rant and rave since I believe that can only get me into trouble so that stuff also gets posted privately or not at all. And since I know I have a tendency to be deliberately hurtful, I veil those thoughts and reword them so they're less cutting but still very much judgmental, only I don't point fingers and only allude to specifics only in passing. It's petty and cowardly, I acknowledge it. And even as I write this, I wonder if I'm not oversharing myself right now and whether or not this should be posted privately as well.
I don't know when I started questioning my putting my thoughts and personal opinions online for people to read. For the most part, I play it safe so I don't have to wrestle with this dilemma very often. Posting about food, or happenings in my life generally isn't that personal. But sometimes I have something to say and a lot of the times I don't because I don't want to deal with what comes afterwards. Will there be a response? How will I justify myself? What if there isn't a response? Do I even want or expect a response? What does that mean and what does it say about me and my motivations if I do?
I don't deal with the unknown very well so a lot of the time, I just give up and retreat back to my safe, predictable self and write posts that garner no response or only positive ones because I wouldn't know how to handle the negative ones. And lately, I've found myself posting less and less. I can't say that it's completely due to this but I can't help but suspect that it's partly due to it. So maybe there is something to be said about the online life, even one like mine. I'll concede that things are different online that in real life but there's a lot that's also the same. And I think that unless everything I post was private, there's no way I'm ever going to be as free to post anything I think without any sort of limits or censors I impose on myself. And I don't want to do that, even to have that freedom because that really isn't what this LJ has become. It chronicles my life but I've found friends on LJ that I want to share with, that I want to have them comment on stuff I write (if it pleases them because even I like having comments at times, I don't really live for them either). I guess one has to be realistic about what they want out of their online life and from what they blog about and what might happen if they post certain things. But really, is that so much different from real life and what we talk about to other people?
I'm not really sure what I've learned from what Emily has gone through aside from not joining Gawker and exposing myself to that side of the internet but I can only hope that my time online in the future will be as they have been in the past and drama-free. I would hate to get to the point where I would want to give up on writing posts because I came to hate everything associated with it. But at the same time I can't help but feel that that will never happen to me because I generally stay out of things aside from my own life. The only problems can arise from my real life so hopefully the two of them will never intersect in such a horribly catastrophic way. In the end, I can't see the future, but I can always hope. And be more aware of what I write. That's really all I can do.
Oh, for those who aren't familiar with Gawker, it's a NYC based blogging site that posts rumors and gossip about people in the media's eye. And a lot of the times, they're rather harsh and critical in a not so very good way. I don't really frequent it because it's really not my thing but they have a pretty healthy following and if Emily is to be believed (and when one is being so candidly honest, one wants to believe her), also inspires stalkerish like tendencies in their readers.
Her experiences in blogging seem rather scary and almost like a movie, in that you feel as though it couldn't have possibly happened. But then you start to think and you start to recall all the instances of craziness that happen on the internet, all the wanks you've seen and how some writers are destroyed by faceless, vicious people online and you start to think that everything that she described must have actually occurred.
Her reasons for blogging are similar to my own, wanting some place, somewhere that has your own mark on it; something to show that you were there and you existed and that these things happened to you and what your own personal feelings were at the time. Oversharing seems inevitable because privacy seems to take a whole new meaning online and it's much more easily disregarded because when you post online, you're posting details to faceless, anonymous people whom you really don't know that well. That makes it seem okay at times, even when you know you would never talk like this to people you're not really familiar with in real life.
After reading this article, I'm infinitely glad that I don't have such a prolific online life as some people do. I don't want a huge following of readers, a couple hundred people on my flist and me on theirs. I don't think I would be very comfortable if that were so. The flist I have now is mostly dominated by communities and the small flist that I've accumulated during my last seven years here on LJ. And the fact that my flist is so small despite me being a long time LJ user comforts me that I probably won't fall into the same sort of trap that Emily did. She says the internet has changed since the time she wrote on her own blog and that's why she won't be able to go back to same sort of freedom and sense of community but after being online and that might be true as the internet is certainly not the same as it was a decade ago when I first started going online. Everything did seem much smaller as opposed this bottomless, endless pit that seems to house the internet. Hell, even a pit is the wrong metaphor seeing as it's more boundless and unconstrained. But despite that, I think it is possible to have a sense of community and belonging. Maybe it's too late for Emily as Emily to have that sort of feeling because of her past choices but I don't think I believe that either. That would be incredibly sad to think that in a place that is so wonderful (even if at times, not so wonderful and more hurtful) and so big, that one person can not carve out a place for themselves that feels absolutely right to them and not almost right.
I like to think of my LJ as that place for me and has been that place for me for some time now. I can't say I'm not like Emily because I do adore comments and I do read each and every one of them, despite not always responding to them. I have a hard time saying what I want to say and have a tendency to say the wrong things if I don't stop and think about them so I generally put a stop on myself before posting or responding to anything. And a lot of those times, I end up letting too much time elapse because I lost interest or the urgency fades and I end up forgetting about writing something so I don't. And I'll admit it, I censor myself at times. The really private stuff that I just can't bear to have other people knowing but still want to have some record of for myself, I post privately. The more delicate stuff that sometimes I can't delicately discuss sometimes get scrapped or amended. For the most part, I try not to rant and rave since I believe that can only get me into trouble so that stuff also gets posted privately or not at all. And since I know I have a tendency to be deliberately hurtful, I veil those thoughts and reword them so they're less cutting but still very much judgmental, only I don't point fingers and only allude to specifics only in passing. It's petty and cowardly, I acknowledge it. And even as I write this, I wonder if I'm not oversharing myself right now and whether or not this should be posted privately as well.
I don't know when I started questioning my putting my thoughts and personal opinions online for people to read. For the most part, I play it safe so I don't have to wrestle with this dilemma very often. Posting about food, or happenings in my life generally isn't that personal. But sometimes I have something to say and a lot of the times I don't because I don't want to deal with what comes afterwards. Will there be a response? How will I justify myself? What if there isn't a response? Do I even want or expect a response? What does that mean and what does it say about me and my motivations if I do?
I don't deal with the unknown very well so a lot of the time, I just give up and retreat back to my safe, predictable self and write posts that garner no response or only positive ones because I wouldn't know how to handle the negative ones. And lately, I've found myself posting less and less. I can't say that it's completely due to this but I can't help but suspect that it's partly due to it. So maybe there is something to be said about the online life, even one like mine. I'll concede that things are different online that in real life but there's a lot that's also the same. And I think that unless everything I post was private, there's no way I'm ever going to be as free to post anything I think without any sort of limits or censors I impose on myself. And I don't want to do that, even to have that freedom because that really isn't what this LJ has become. It chronicles my life but I've found friends on LJ that I want to share with, that I want to have them comment on stuff I write (if it pleases them because even I like having comments at times, I don't really live for them either). I guess one has to be realistic about what they want out of their online life and from what they blog about and what might happen if they post certain things. But really, is that so much different from real life and what we talk about to other people?
I'm not really sure what I've learned from what Emily has gone through aside from not joining Gawker and exposing myself to that side of the internet but I can only hope that my time online in the future will be as they have been in the past and drama-free. I would hate to get to the point where I would want to give up on writing posts because I came to hate everything associated with it. But at the same time I can't help but feel that that will never happen to me because I generally stay out of things aside from my own life. The only problems can arise from my real life so hopefully the two of them will never intersect in such a horribly catastrophic way. In the end, I can't see the future, but I can always hope. And be more aware of what I write. That's really all I can do.
