Facebook, Twitter: How we chose to live in public

[tinpra]

Some people celebrated the coming of 2010 with crystal glasses of fizzy yellow liquid. Others used the opportunity to stare into their crystal glasses and see what we have and will become.

Perhaps the most pulsating and sad suggestion is that we no longer have any privacy. You burp in Bellingham and someone quickly hears about it in Sydney. You decide you dislike your wife, so you tweet about it, tell your Facebook friends and then get around to telling her. If you can remember to do that.

Even more bilious is the early-in-2009 suggestion of Laurent Haug, CEO of the Lift Conference, that if we want privacy we have to create it. You know, make your public self the publicly palatable version and keep the insidious pervert you for your special friends.

(Read the rest on cnet.com)

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I think to some extent this applies to us lj-ers and dreamwidth-ers. Are folks who use blogger, and the liike, less likely to divulge personal stuff, or is it that you're more likely to find serious blogs on sites like blogger...along with the post-about-random-stuff-ers?

Comments

[faithburke.livejournal.com]

It is an interesting question. I don't post much about myself, but that is really due to laziness rather than any desire for privacy. And I have a close friend who just found out she was pregnant. She told her husband after taking the home test, and he promptly put it on facebook before she had a chance to call her mom or grandmother or his parents, or any of her friends.

I think we all censor ourselves at least a little in public. Certainly there are things that you would say to your friends that you wouldn't bring up at work or in front of your grandmother. But the suggestion seems to be that we create entirely different versions of ourselves for the public, and I . . .don't want to believe that.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

I don't post much about myself, but that is really due to laziness rather than any desire for privacy. I understand where you're coming. I am pretty private, but there are plenty of things I would post if I weren't just too lazy to put it up, even only if under an f-lock. Then again I'm also just as likely to have gotten enough of an outlet just by telling someone via IM and never remember to put it on lj afterward.

On the other hand I'm not one to post very personal things b/c I'm not one to share very personal things with everyone either. I'll admit to being more cautious with ppl online than I am with folks in person, but I'm pretty selective about the real life friends I share personal issues with as well.

But the suggestion seems to be that we create entirely different versions of ourselves for the public, and I . . .don't want to believe that. Nor I, but I think lots of ppl do it, even if they aren't thinking about it that way.

[klcthebookworm.livejournal.com]

Catching up on posts I missed over the holidays.

I don't know if the issue can be broken down so easily to "LJ is setup for more personal blathering and Blogger isn't." I have a few pro authors I follow who offer writing advice/articles through their LJs. I share my personal blatherings and updates through my Blog "Intentionally Left Blank" but decided to branch my writing life and sewing hobby into separate blogs. When I decided to start a blog offering writing advice as a professional blogger, I chose a completely different publish platform than LJ, Blogger, or Wordpress.

Some people have no separation of public versus the personal, and online can make that even murkier. It drives me bonkers when I see otherwise intelligent people post their drunken party pictures to their whatever-is-hottest-at-the-moment and then wonder why it comes back later to bite them in the butt.

Or the firestorm I created merely by suggesting that fiction needs to be finished before you publish and that includes posting to the Internet. Good gods, you'd think I had told them to burn their little darlings rather than suggesting that not antagonizing readers with something you can't finish is a good thing. :p

I worry that people's ability to reflect on things is being neglected in favor of being the first to say anything.

[tinpra.livejournal.com]

Catching up on posts I missed over the holidays. :D Welcome back.

I have a few pro authors I follow who offer writing advice/articles through their LJs. Ditto. I follow marthawells and rj_anderson, and I think Neil Gaiman has an lj. Another author I like (Steven something) has an lj that's a mix of professional advice and quirky author/life stories, so I see what you mean.

It drives me bonkers when I see otherwise intelligent people post their drunken party pictures to their whatever-is-hottest-at-the-moment and then wonder why it comes back later to bite them in the butt. Tell me about it! Why no one thinks that their public postings can't or won't be read by their boss is beyond me. This, I think, relates to your point about ppl not reflecting on things before saying them in an effort to say them first. There's very little thought going into "Hmm, should I really post that picture of me (or my friend or whomever) with my boobs (or theirs) hanging out, or me scratching my crotch, or some semi-embarrassing-but-otherwise-innocent game I play with my fam/friends?" Or posting opinions without thinking them through or researching them first. I know I'm wont to be guilty of that. Or, on the flipside, of overthinking and not posting at all.

Or the firestorm I created merely by suggesting that fiction needs to be finished before you publish and that includes posting to the Internet. lol....this makes me think of when I switched from only posting when I was either finished or near-finishing to actively posting WIPs. You see where that's gotten me. Or not gotten me.