10.04.08

Anonymity and the interblags

Posted in internet subcultures at 11:14 pm by rachel

I’m from the internet: from USENET, and from some early web BBs, but mostly I’m from LiveJournal.

For the past 7 years, I’ve written on LJ more-or-less under my real identity, and it has involved carefully adjusting what kind of content is viewable to readers on a per-person basis. That fine-grained control was great for me as a (nerdy, awkward) teenager. I could control how much to let each friend into my inner world. I could seek advice on high school drama only from friends outside the state. Because of this feature, LJ was a social diary: a means of recording my life as well as getting support and staying in touch.

I’ve experimented with other modes of blogging, too. For a few years I maintained a very personal blog with all content public – but it was under an identity that was very difficult to trace back to me. That blog quickly took on the character of postsecret or confess.cc - interesting and honest, but very dramatic. Eventually I abandoned it.

I also used to write for a group blog. All content was public and I publically associated myself with the blog, but most people didn’t know which of the pseudonymous bloggers I was. The content I posted was fairly personal, but I found myself writing more forcefully (angrily?) than I did on LJ or on my anonymous blog. On the group blog, everything felt mischievous and daring, but at the end of the day I didn’t really believe that what I wrote could come back to haunt me.

In each of these three blog experiences, my blogging behavior was shaped by the amount of anonymity (and the amount of control over privacy) I had. On this blog, though, it was all new territory. And once again, the amount of anonymity I had shaped my blogging behavior.

Unfortunately, my skittishness about having ZERO anonymity resulted in, well, zero posts for 5 months. I don’t know what I can do about that skittishness besides power through, though, so powering through I am. I think a post a day ought to do it.

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