Semi-Anonymous Blogging

So you know that thing that I really didn't want to happen?

It happened.

That's right; my classmates found my blog.

At least one of them did, anyway. Possibly two.

I knew right away, of course, as I'd already labeled their IP address (they live together) from my grad school blog. I knew it wouldn't be hard to find this one if they had that one. People comment on that one, you click on their comments, it takes you to their blog, and I'm on their blog-roll. You could get here from there in under 30 seconds, even without actively looking for this.

Actually, I made it even easier by being sloppy. I responded to a comment while signed in, which linked to my profile, which linked to this. Easy as pie.

I didn't know quite what to do at first, so I sent them an email:

Okay, so I know that one of you found my real blog.

Please do me a favor and don't spread it around.

And also, I hope that you having read that doesn't make anything awkward. *crosses fingers*

~A~

I ended up texting one of them (the one whom I assumed it was, as he asked me for my blog address just last night). It was him, indeed. He said he wasn't offended, and that I hadn't written anything that wasn't true. He seems to feel guilty for having read it, and assured me that he wouldn't again. But frankly, this stuff is on the internet. It's not like I can be upset if people read it. I told him as much.

The other classmate wrote me, quote, "your secret is safe with me". He said he hadn't looked at the blog yet, and didn't know if his roommate had.

I was a little relieved. As far as I can recall, I haven't written anything negative or scandalous about either party, but it's still nerve-racking the first time someone from real life reads your blog. Particularly if they arrived on the scene without warning.

I relayed this story to my roommate later, and she made it clear that she has a problem with blogging and bloggers. She thinks that this, as a medium, is a major invasion of privacy. After all, if I tell a story about myself that involves other people, I've just put a story about them on the internet. And if, say, their families, friends, girlfriends, etc. find this blog, then I may have put them in, at the very least, an awkward situation.

I see her point. I take certain measures to help prevent that, including:

- Making this blog un-Google-able.
- Not writing where I'm at school.
- Not using my classmates' real names.
- Being incredibly vague on occasion. (Note how I'll sometimes tell a story using phrases like "one of my classmates" instead of using that person's specific nickname.)

Is that enough? Hopefully.

My roommate says it really bothers her that I track IP addresses. If you got an email out of nowhere saying that someone knew you'd read their blog, wouldn't you think, "YOU'RE the stalker, not me"?

I never really thought about it like that.

There really is a culture to blogging, I suppose. Something that makes it seem like its own little world, away from the rest of life. Things that bloggers do make sense to us, though they might not make sense to the outside world. It's weird when those worlds collide.

It's especially odd for someone like me. I like to think of myself as a "semi-anonymous" blogger. I blog under my own name. I post pictures of myself. Some people that I know primarily from real life read my blog. And nearly everyone that I interact with on a regular basis (including some of my professors) knows that I have a blog. The "anonymous" part kicks in because I don't tell people where this blog is. I don't link to it on my Facebook profile, I don't put it on my business cards... Generally, I don't even tell people where it is when they ask.

When my classmate asked me for my blog address last night, I must've visibly squirmed. He asked, "oh... is it a secret?" I told him that I'd rather people here not read it, but that it's on the internet and if he found it, he could read it. He said that the internet was a big place, and he didn't plan to look. Then he found it within a matter of hours.

But that is how I feel about things. My brother reads this from time to time. Ex-coworkers read this (and were reading it long before there was an ex in front of coworker). A few Tony n' Tina's people read this. And that's fine. They can read it at their own risk, and I'll just pray that I haven't upset them. But I also have a right to free speech.

That said, I wish to offend no one. Someone once asked me to stop blogging about him, so I did. Someone once asked me to remove a post, so I did. Someone asked me to not mention something that we did together, so I didn't. I didn't think that I HAD to; rather, I did these things as a courtesy. But if I had said "too bad", I think that would've been within my rights... it just isn't my style.

Self-censorship sucks. It sucks a lot. But sometimes it's the best way to handle sensitive situations, so I'm willing to put up with it.

But that's why I'm semi-anonymous. I don't WANT to have to censor myself. If I keep my little corner of the net hidden JUST ENOUGH, then I won't have to.

All of this went down yesterday, and I had a very serious moment of "maybe I should stop blogging" or "maybe I should make this blog private". But I don't want to do either. I know that as soon as someone's blog goes private and stops showing up on my Google Reader, I forget about it. And I'd hate to be forgotten about.

When I started this blog, I said I was writing it for me. On some level, I still am. But I'm also blogging because having people read, relate, advise, and empathize makes me feel connected to the universe on days when I feel so very alone. It makes me feel heard, understood, and loved. It reminds me that the world is bigger than the small circle I exist within.

I know that blogging is dangerous when you're as open and honest of a person as I am. I deleted my high school diary-x because of that, actually. A bunch of my friends had them, and some tensions and altercations arose as a result of all the public venting.

My college diary-x was successfully anonymous for years, before the site crashed... but that was back before blogging became what it is to me now. Back when all that existed for me seemed like angsty high school whatnot, and people used to write what they ate for lunch.

I loathe the chemicals churning in my stomach as I write this. I wish this were a non-issue... I hate that I feel suddenly guilty for participating in something that has given me so much joy and release. I wish people understood what it's meant to be. But I suppose the only way to really, truly understand what it is to be a blogger is to do it yourself.

I wonder if things will be weird tomorrow when I see the person who read my blog. They will be a little, I suppose. There's a certain level of vulnerability on my part now. I feel a little exposed.

I think he understood that, actually. He offered up his high school LiveJournal for my perusal. It was a sweet gesture. I'm not sure that I'll actually read it, but it was lovely of him to make himself a little vulnerable as well. It evens things out somehow.

I wonder if either of them is reading this. *shyly waves*

I hope they're not judging my ability to write. If anyone were ever to attempt to gauge my intelligence level based on the senseless whining that this is filled with... Yikes. I wouldn't want to see the ramifications of that evaluation. I'd be handled with "kid-gloves" for the rest of my days.

I have to stop thinking about this. If they want to read it, they're going to read it. If they don't, they won't. If they want me to not write about them, I won't. But that doesn't mean that I have to stop writing altogether. Indeed, I'm not sure I could.

Sometimes I wish I were a fully anonymous blogger. I wish I'd had the foresight to have a screen name like Deutlich or Princess Pointful. It wouldn't have hurt anything.

But I guess complete anonymity doesn't suit me. I'm open. I'm honest. I'm a performer. Not to share my identity to some extent, as exhibitionistic as it may seem, would have limited me too much. I have to be who I am and write what I feel. And I guess I'll just deal with the consequences of the risks that I take while doing exactly that.


May you be as faceless and nameless as you need to be.

~A~