The problem with telling your own story

Or: How I learned to love my lack of anonymity on the Internet.

The Internet is forever. For those of you who think you can post something stupid – or have something stupid posted about you – and not have it linger somewhere for eternity, don’t bet on it. Trust me on this one. That is not exactly what this is about, though.

You can never bet on being truly anonymous online. This should be obvious, but a lot of people are lulled into a false sense of security by the sheer amount of data on the Internet. It is, I suppose, easy to think “only five people read my blog/online journal/whatever, so what do I have to worry about?” People use false names for the major players in their blog stories and presume that this obfuscation is enough to keep them anonymous, never thinking that context usually provides clues to those in the know. It is amazing what you can get from context, and it’s even more amazing what clues you leave behind when you don’t intend to. Staying anonymous is hard enough when you’re just talking about yourself, but bring other people and places into it, and someday, somewhere, someone is going to figure it out. And never assume that all of your readers are benign, either – there are folks out there who get a big kick out of exposing people and throwing their lives into chaos, and you have no choice about whether or not these folks decide to make an appearance on your virtual doorstep.

This is in large part why I don’t write this blog anonymously. Every time I write something, the specter of whoever in or near my life, current or future, might have the worst reaction to reading it looms over me. Sometimes I ignore it, and sometimes I don’t, but it is always there, and it is always worth keeping in mind.

But self-censorship, in its strictest form, is not healthy either. In fact, I suspect that’s why many people write personal blogs – they’re required to keep so much of who they are and what they think bottled up inside in their daily lives that they simply need an outlet. Writing in a diary/private journal is one thing, but that may simply be transferring whatever is being fenced in in one’s head to being fenced in on paper or disk. Blogging is different – it provides the possibility of discussion without the necessity for it, a forum to express oneself without imposing one’s opinion on others. How many times have you read a blog post that included the phrase, “If you don’t like my blog, don’t read it”, or some such? In such a disconnected world, it is little wonder that so many use it as an outlet for expression. It’s not like it’s possible to get one’s thoughts out in the daily 10 hours at the cubicle farm. And some people just need a creative outlet.

Self-censorship also prevents people from expressing real opinions – and God forbid you have a real opinion in public these days. During the year I worked for The Man ™, I wrote very few blog posts due to the nature of the company I worked for – they were (rightly) obsessed with privacy and confidentiality, so I would never have dreamed of blogging about them, but furthermore, working there, in the current American political climate, implied certain political views which I rather vehemently did not hold, and so keeping my mouth shut publicly about pretty much everything seemed like a good idea. In truth, I doubt it would have had any professional consequences (I knew there were other closet progressives like me, though, so it was hard to really know), but I preferred to play it safe. I did my job well, and I didn’t think the current attitude amongst conservatives of questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them would have served me well. And so I kept my mouth shut, and within weeks after I left, found myself bursting out of my shell with posts of political outrage, fear, or at least serious annoyance.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t particularly think anyone has a right to shove their opinions constantly in anyone else’s face, but that most people seem to have lost their voices in the modern world simply means that only those with the biggest mouths are ever heard. It doesn’t bode well for us as a society. In case you haven’t noticed, those with the biggest mouths have, for example, kept us in an unwinnable war, completely let down the armed services, destroyed U.S. foreign relations and respectability abroad, and ruined the planet. And their lackeys shout down anyone who tries to argue with it (just try watching any serious debate on a news show – I’m getting a little sick of conservatives with talking points simply using talking louder than their opponents as a form of reasonable debate).

But losing one’s voice has another consequence – not being able to tell your story to anyone anywhere creates a great sense of identity loss, and this is where it gets complicated. We all have a story to tell, and we find different ways to tell it (or we don’t tell it, and are frustrated by that fact). For some people, the blogosphere has turned out to be a great venue for this – people can argue with you, but they can’t simply talk louder than you to drown you out. People can criticize, but in all honesty, you don’t have to listen to it, and they don’t have to read it. The choice of topics is only limited by what you have on your mind, and you aren’t imposing on anyone if you need to blather a little. (Not that I, for example, would ever blather *ahem*…)

So the real problem is how to express oneself while keeping this lack of anonymity in mind. Some people, myself sometimes included, find themselves blogging to spite this idea that one should always keep one’s opinion to oneself. On the other hand, there is a fine line between telling one’s own story and hurting other people unnecessarily. And that is where it gets tough, because very few of us have stories that don’t have supporting characters. If the consequences of this don’t come immediately to mind, check out what is now the classic cautionary tale for watching your mouth on the Internet if you want to keep your job, Dooce‘s blog. (I have to admit, the blog is a favorite of mine.) When personal relationships get involved, it becomes much trickier. You should really never assume that someone you’re blogging about isn’t going to find what you’ve written, and even if they don’t find it directly, chances are someone they know will. Presume that your friends, your enemies, your family, your in-laws, your ex-bf/gf, your classmates, your fiancé(e), your boss, your boss’s cat, your spouse’s boss’s wife’s cat’s mouse, and of course George W. Bush’s personal reader read your blog. Not that they necessarily do, but make that presumption.

I don’t really in my heart-of-hearts believe most of these folks care about what I have to say, but consider the consequences of being wrong about that.

But this is not enough; consider the consequences of being wrong about who reads your blog, and then decide which of those consequences you can live with. There are always potential consequences anytime you open your mouth, and that’s no excuse to never express yourself. For example, if I mention on my blog that I have an annoying spoiled neighbor who pulls our sprinkler out of our lawn because we might get water near her car, and she reads it, she may egg my house. Am I going to not post because of that possibility? No, I am going to post it, and call the police if I catch her egging my house. On the other hand, if I have a dear friend who is in some sort of insane relationship and I have an opinion about it, this is certainly not the forum where I would choose to discuss that; the very real possibility of hurting someone with whom I have a good relationship and love dearly, even if she has no idea how to use The Google, is certainly not worth expelling my own frustrations in a rant. That would be callous and self-serving, and that’s not OK. (N.B. This is entirely hypothetical – none of my friends are currently in insane relationships that I know about.)

But, and I realize I’m entering treacherous waters with this one, there are people who fall in between, and this is where it gets tough. How exactly do you judge mentioning, however obliquely, a situation which involves someone with whom you have some sort of relationship and who does not, for example, respect your feelings or privacy or desires, but expects you to treat their own as sacred? What about when a friend or family member or colleague who doesn’t permit you to have an opinion in spite of their own dogmatic expert opinions on everyone and everything is somehow involved? It’s certainly questionable to mention them just to “get back at them” for being, for lack of a better word, pains in the ass. But what if that is not, in fact, your purpose? Are you obliged to never refer to the situation? Even if you refrain from mentioning names or roles or anything else that would clearly make the person externally identifiable? Clearly, there’s always the possibility that someone who knows you figures it out from context anyway. And perhaps the situation with that person has gotten to the point where the relationship is only a formality; it’s always very hard to care very much about what someone thinks when they couldn’t care less about what you think, and if there’s no real relationship there, it becomes that much more difficult. If it’s not going to expose that person to ridicule, and it’s not going to get you fired/divorced/jailed, what, exactly, is the right balance between self-expression and self-censorship?

You consider the consequences, of course. And you decide whether or not those consequences are worth it. This is much tougher than it sounds.

For example, I’ve written a bunch of posts which may or may not go live at the end of the month, and one of those posts refers, obliquely, to a class of people who are now rather marginally in my life and who, when they get involved with me, tend to want to take over. Clearly, by the nature of this group, they are not folks who really think I’m entitled to an opinion, and in fact, they tend to make me fairly angry, mostly by tromping on my feelings and expecting me to respect theirs. I’ve finally gotten to the point in my real life where I can stand up to them and tell them what I really think, but is posting about related concerns without really talking about the actual people involved OK? Certainly there will be some of them who will be pissed off if 1) they read it, and 2) they are astute enough to understand that I mean them. I suspect they are; I am not often very subtle. But then I think, “These people are usually pissed off at me anytime I tell them they can’t run my life anyway. When was the last time any of these people was worried about hurting my feelings?”

Now, let me be straight here – I wouldn’t post anything to hurt anyone’s feelings intentionally, and it would be irresponsible not to consider that possibility. The thought that most threatens to trump my resistence to posting, though, is this: Why on Earth should I let anyone who has spent time trying to shut down my opinions for no other reason than to be in control keep me from expressing myself? It feels like giving in to the control-freaks of the world, and I’m sorry, but when it’s my own life, I’m just not willing to do that. I do think that if people are unwilling to hear your opinion, you don’t have a whole lot of responsibility to take theirs into account. But I’m sure there are limits on that too.

So I’m not really sure where the line lies, and that’s the problem with telling one’s own story. There are lots of good things in my life, and a few frustrating and bad ones, and I still pick and choose which of those I want to – and am willing to – talk about. Weighing the consequences, though, is tough, whether or not you’ve made efforts to hide your identity on the Internet, and I think you just have to play it by ear and accept what comes, including when you make mistakes in judgement. There are some really interesting stories which I will probably never tell publicly, because, in spite of the fact that I don’t like the people involved, I don’t think airing personal dirty laundry is a good thing. But the stories that are about me which are impacted by other people, well… that is a much tougher call. My feeling, for the moment, is that you do your best to generalize or deemphasize those people to protect them from others’ criticism, and decide whether or not the message you will inevitably send them, intentional or not, is one you want to send them, even if that’s not the purpose of what you write. In my case, it isn’t the purpose of the post in question at all; my post is about me and something that may happen when such folks get involved in a particular situation. I’m pretty sure that’s my story to tell. That other messages get sent as a by-product, though, frankly doesn’t bother me. I’ve been trying to send those messages for years, using just about everything but singing telegrams

But it is a tough call. I will sit on the post for a while longer and think about it.

I will have to consider the consequences of posting… and, perhaps as important, those of not doing so.