Occasionally I think about how everything I write here will be preserved forever, archived by Google and the likes. That's sort of creepy. If I say something I shouldn't have, I can't un-say it later, just like in real life. This doesn't frequently have much of an effect on things that I say (I'm keepin' it real, yo), but I do have to at least keep it in mind.
Let's say there's an intern on my team, and I decide to post one of the following things about her:
"A new intern joined the team this week. I haven't talked to her much yet, but wow... hot."
"This week I've been exchanging a lot of emails with the intern. I don't know how exactly she got this job, but it certainly wasn't through competence. At least she's cute."
"Recently I've been eating lunch with one of the new intern girls quite a lot. It's strange, but I find myself really wishing she gets a job with our team; I'll hate for this to all end for good at the end of the summer."
All of those things, while potentially true, are embarrassing for different reasons if the person in question finds the post at some point in time. Maybe she finds it by accident, or adds me as a friend or Facebook, or something like that. If she goes through the post history, she'd find one about her. Creepy for her, embarrassing for me.
(This strikes me as a relatively new problem. A decade ago, nobody blogged, there was no Facebook or MySpace, and this sort of thing was unlikely to be a problem for anyone. Now it's pretty routine for some of your personal thoughts to end up archived on the internet forever in some way or another, whether or not you intended it.)
Finding a way to balance that unfortunate aspect of things with actually wanting to post things that relate to me personally instead of just random quotes or musings can actually be difficult. But, usually, I have to end up eliminating all assessments of people I know or might know in the future. I imagine it detracts from the context of the post, which is unfortunate. But, I think that being vague on the internet is better in the long run than later regretting a post I made long ago.
Currently listening: Linkin Park and Jay-Z—Collision Course—Faint / Jigga What
(Five years from now, am I really going to want it to be archived for all time that I was listening to that?)
2 comments:
I know what you mean. I tend to be vague on my blog too. Many times I start to type something to post but then have a change of heart and delete it all because I am not comfortable with having it posted on the net.
Of course, I'm not the kind of person that I think people would go out and try to find on the net. I'm really not that important.
I don't know if Blogger does this, but LJ has were you can actually edit who can see certain posts, therefore, if it is incrediably personal, it isn't there for everyone to see. Personally, I've never done it. I figure if it is not something I am comfortable sharing, than I just shouldn't post it.
I don't think Blogger has this feature... if it does, it's only in the beta version. At any rate, I don't think that I would use it; I just wouldn't post those sorts of things.
Post a Comment