The fun and folly of blogging
I’m been blogging longer than most (just over five years) and I blog more often than most (usually every day), but I’m very careful to respect the privacy of my family and friends and indeed of myself. I guess that some bloggers become carried away and forget that their postings can be seen by anyone in the world with access to the Net and for all practical purposes are there for ever.
There’s an article in the “Observer” newspaper today about the unfortunate experience of American blogger Emily Gould. The British piece refers to a much longer article – some 8,000 words in fact – in the “New York Times” in which Emily writes about what she gained and lost by writing about her intimate life online. She concludes the piece as follows:
“I understand that by writing here about how I revealed my intimate life online, I’ve now revealed even more about what happened during the period when I was most exposed. Well, I’m an oversharer — it’s not like I’m entirely reformed. But lately, online, I’ve found myself doing something unexpected: keeping the personal details of my current life to myself. This doesn’t make me feel stifled so much as it makes me feel protected, as if my thoughts might actually be worth honing rather than spewing. But I still have Emily Magazine as a place to spew when I need to. It will never again be the friendly place that it was in 2004 — there are plenty of negative comments now, and I don’t delete them. I still think about closing the door to my online life and locking them out, but then I think of everything else I’d be locking out, and I leave it open.”