In retrospect, the reason I started blogging is somewhat amusing. Circa 1999, I felt like programming something to help myself learn PHP. Writing a weblog script struck me as a good level of challenge. Once I finished it, I figured I should use it. I hate to leave a perfectly good piece of software to collect dust on a shelf. Thus was my first foray into the “blogosphere.” I didn’t really plan to get into it, but I’ve always had a passion for writing, and I found it oddly gratifying when people actually read what I wrote. It’s an ego bump to have perfect strangers regularly tuning in to see how your day was, and what’s on your mind… especially when you’re just some kid in high school that no one really listens to.
I started more blogs, for more specific topics — programming, music, and so on. I became friends with people I’d never met. Once, riding home from school on the subway, I hap’d upon gentleman wearing a t-shirt with a blog URL I recognized. I chatted him up, and it turned out to be his blog. We knew each other, even though we’d never met. It was a very charming moment, and the epitome of what I feel blogging should be. Blogging can foster a fun, serendipitous sense of community with people you’d otherwise never know. It can turn an anonymous face on the subway into a friend. It let me rant and rave about things that bothered me, and hear back from other people — often strangers — that felt the same way, and made me feel less alone. It filled in a yearning for a sense of community, and community is all too hard to come by these days.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be the high-water mark. As “weblogs” turned into “blogs” and more people got on board, ugliness started to creep into the picture. I saw stories in the news about people being fired for badmouthing employers on blogs, or getting in trouble for unpopular political sentiments. Blogs were starting to chomp down on the forbidden apple, their innocence and openness under attack. Still, I didn’t worry too much about it, and kept blogging. Most of what I wrote was just the ins and outs of my day, weird dreams I had, and random topics I’d been mulling over. I didn’t think anyone would have any problem with any of it, to be frank. I was wrong.
The drama began one cold winter evening when some high school friends of mine complained about one of our teachers on their blogs. It was pretty tame — the language was polite (though critical). There were no threats, merely griping about his, er, uneven classroom conduct. It was just venting, teenage angst, and not anything the writers thought to be of any real consequence. They were blogging about the teacher along with all the other things in their lives — friends, commuting, politics, whatever. We’re talking about one or two blog entries out of a hundred. None of them thought it would kick over an anthill.
It turned out that a school secretary with too much time on her hands had found the blogs, and was actively following them. She wasted little time informing the teacher in question, and the next day a few of my friends wound up in a disciplinary meeting with no clue as to why they had been summoned. The school administration demanded that the posts be removed. My friends complied, yet they were still punished, simply because the teacher in question felt the need for revenge (ironically, this is the sort of behavior they blogged/complained about in the first place!) It made me angry. I felt my friends’ freedom of speech had been curtailed, and their privacy invaded. They felt the same way. My emotions overrode what little degree of political savvy I had at the time, and I posted an entry to my blog calling the school faculty fascists. Childish, I know, but this was high school. I guess I felt I should fall on the sword along with my buddies. The school obliged, and I got in trouble too. There was talk of calling the ACLU, but we realized it wasn’t the sort of case that would light the ACLU’s tits on fire, so to speak. We bitterly let it go, and went on with our lives.
After that, I got a lot more paranoid about blogging. You never know who will find your blog. I deleted certain entries and removed my name from the blogs. I disallowed the spidering of my blogs by search engines. Most importantly, I wrote less, and less freely. As I went through college and eased into the life of an employed adult, the paranoia only deepened. I became nervous about the consequences of employers finding my blogs. I ascribe to the hacker ethos that information should be free, wants to be free. It pained me to do it, but a man has to eat. Finally, eventually, I pulled every public blog entry I had. I started new blogs with absolutely no ties to my real identity. So it’s been for the past couple years — I feel that the only way I can speak freely is to remain anonymous.
It’s not that I’m a political firebrand liable to incite a riot with my prose, or anything. At the end of the day, I’m just worried something I write will be taken out of context and be used against me. I’m not a bad person, and my views aren’t that out of line with mainstream society. I get up every morning and try to do the right thing. I work hard. I’m kind to animals. I donate to charity. I think Hitler was an evil jerk.
Recently, though, I’ve started to feel somewhat hampered by the anonymity. I’ll awkwardly rehash some point from memory for a co-worker, while knowing I have it elegantly phrased in a blog entry I can’t link. It might put my blog “on the grid.” I can tell a potential employer that I’m a great writer, but I can’t show them.
So, I’ve decided to try exposing a little of myself again. In a brash all-or-nothing approach, my real name is right in the URL, and I will allow spidering. Please don’t make me regret it… or this, too, will promptly vaporize.
