I’ve been pondering what it would be like - or if it’s desirable, or even possible - to take a “write as if nobody’s reading” approach to this blog. What if I actually did that? I wonder if it’s doable, because then I could potentially be compromising other people’s privacy where their lives intersect w/ mine. That’s always one of the biggest considerations w/ “life blogging” (or, “blogging,” as we old-schoolers call it) to any degree. But also, if I actually wrote some of the stuff I think, without a filter or an appropriately saccharine coating, about, say, certain happenings in certain portions of Ye Olde Blogosphere, would I be inviting exactly the drama I try to avoid in my life? Can I really expect to “talk smack” (that’s how it would look to readers, anyway) and not have people talk back?
So should I keep quiet, or at least reserve certain thoughts for my super-old-school paper journal (which I write in sporadically at best), out of a desire to minimize drama?
I really do not like drama.
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6 Responses to "I wonder…"
There’s always password-protected posts. Drama is an unfortunate side effect of sincerity.
Personally, my approach to that is that “this is why I have an SO.” Because the fact is, even though we pay for our own little playgrounds here, the fact of the matter is that, as the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” There are plenty of things I say, stuff that I rant about, that I know if I were to post it on my blog, it would hurt people that care about, either by compromising their privacy in an unacceptable (to them) manner or by the fact that sometimes, the raw unadulterated Way I Feel Right Now is not really How I’m Going to Feel Tomorrow. Or, it’s just mean. I don’t know, maybe I’m mellowing out in my old age or I’m learning or I don’t know what, but being circumspect when the occasion calls is certianly the better part of valor, I’m finding. And, to be clear, I’m applying that to personal stuff. There are gripes I have in my personal life that I would never in a million years air on my blog. The one PW protected post I’ve done this year is about as close as I get to that, and I still sometimes feel sqeamish about that one, because, yeah, it’s all true and that’s how I felt, but in the end my feelings are, in my own estimation, ridiculous on that particular count. I did that to see what I thought of it, and basically while I am not going to take it down, I think it’s possible that I would have been better off just confiding all that to Thomas and my mom.
On political stuff? No way. Gloves off. But I don’t write about people in the same way I would write about politics, social issues, or whatever else.
I wasn’t really talking about totally *personal* issues… more like, that strange in-between area of Blog Drama, mostly.
Rusty’s right - venting on a password protected post may be the best way to get those thoughts out for now. The pain in the neck is then you have to send a password out to people, and have the password protected post sitting there so that everyone else sees it and wonders what it’s about and obsesses about why they weren’t given the password to it.
To me, this points out one of the ways that blogs may need to change in the future and become a little more like some of the social networking sites. It would be really cool if blogging software allowed you to activate visibility of certain posts/topics for different groups of friends. This may not come into reality tomorrow, but I bet we’ll see it one of these days in the not too distant future
Livejournal has that feature, but I don’t plan on defecting to LJ! It’s something Wordpress should really think about including in an upcoming version.
I struggle with this a little, as you know. I say “a little” because the people I attack are determined to ignore me, so usually it doesn’t turn into drama. If it does, I resolutely don’t read the dissenting posts on other people’s blogs and I will publish dissenting comments either without bothering to write a response, or, if they’re abusive, simply delete them. And excessive snark towards me on my blog counts as abusive.
I also take the no-linking way out — I don’t link the blog of who I’m criticizing unless they’re too big to bother with a little blog like mine. And also because, if they’re small and loud, they tend to like attention and I’d rather not gratify.
It really doesn’t get to me any more when I get grossly misinterpreted and even hated for something I’ve said. It used to hurt and enrage; now, it’s pretty easy to tell myself they’re so fucking stupid, it’s not worth it to care what they have to say.
I’m pretty comfortable with these boundaries.
I still don’t say everything I want to say. My big solution to get it out of my system? I write as if to post and then simply save it as a draft for future reference and perhaps posting it, or posting it in an amended form, at some later date.
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