Interesting dilemma Q called me last night. She lives in a small university town, and just discovered that her (now, unsurprisingly ex-) boyfriend has been blogging about their sex life and talked about something she regards as secret. She's not a tech-lit-chick, so didn't know what it meant, till she read it yesterday. He's used her name (which he's now changed to a silly code name), revealed details about her life, her family and her financial situation which she regards as personal. For her, the whole thing is a mass invasion of privacy; "a very big version of gossip, with no social controls".
I took a look at his blog; it's shit. Lousy design, worse writing, an utterly navel-gazing experience with not a link in site/sight. The whole information democratisation thing means that I'd be surprised if two people read it. And one of them's probably him; it's mostly a vanity site to show off to his mates about him getting some. But Q feels like "the internet" is the front page of the Guardian, and I tried to explain that his blog (and mine too, no doubt) is like a trade ad in a local paper. Now he's changed her real name, it's extremely hard to know it's her, but Q's upset by his mates adding comments like "she sounds like a selfish cow".
But it's made me think; I'm extremely careful about whom and what I blog, and there's still a fine line between what's his experience, and what's hers. Is there a difference between a conversation you might have over a beer/glass of wine, and publishing it online? Or do we live in a Jerry Springer world, where what you say only counts if you have an audience? It's the attention economy meets epistemology theory. I think.
Or is the very fact that I'm blogging about Q's ex blogging about her just, well, up somebody's arse? The personal, it's no longer political, it's public.
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