In which I wonder about content ownership and self expression as they pertain to the act of blogging.
One time I wrote something on my site about a friend of mine, and woke up freaked out realizing that if she read the post it might hurt her feelings. I got up and deleted the passage in the middle of the night, sick with worry that she’d already read it.
I didn’t take a job once, for several reasons but primarily because the non-compete wouldn’t have allowed me to blog about it. I was threatened with a law suit after I posted about a bad experience at a hospital. A friend once told me off for posting about the death of a mutual friend’s dog, saying it wasn’t my story to tell. An employer had me remove a post because I’d said I thought the company was broke when they laid off some staff. And just last week, a member of the Band That Never Gigs read what I had to say about a recent practice and got pissed at me.
Now with a track record like that, it must seem that I write whatever I damn well feel like. But I don’t! You have no idea how much stuff I don’t write about! (My God, I should get a gold star for reticence, for real.) The truth is that I carefully consider every single scrap of content, comparing it to a veritable array of mental indices I’ve developed to help me determine if a story is actually mine to tell or not before publishing it on the web:
- If the topic is common knowledge, I can write about it.
- If the event took place in public, it’s common knowledge.
- If I’m telling only my experience or my reaction to something, and obfuscating all identifying details, I can write about it.
- If it doesn’t endanger anyone’s feelings, livelihood, or reputation, I can write about it.
- If I’ve been given permission to write about it, I can write about it.
- If it’s totally about me, I can write about it.
I never write about secrets. I have deliberately not written – several times – about what a burden it is when someone tells me a secret, even though I could write about the burden itself without revealing any details of the secret. (If I were to write that post, it might go something like this: “I hate secrets. Right now I’m worrying over two, and I didn’t ask to hear either of them. One requires me to not offer love and help to someone who’s needing it, because I don’t officially know it’s needed. The other involves two people directly and their spouses indirectly, all of whom are my friends, and requires me watch my tongue so that I don’t reveal what I know – what I never wanted to know in the first place – accidentally in front of the wrong person. Why do people do this shit to me?!”)
Yeah, secrets suck. Moving on.
I try very hard to make sure I actually own the topics I write about, but sometimes it gets really complicated. Take the hypothetical breakup of two of my friends: let’s say the breakup is common knowledge, but what each of my friends have told me about it is, of course, private. My thoughts about and reactions to the breakup are mine, but if I can’t frame my thoughts without revealing private details I’d have to give that one a pass as far as writing about it goes. Like secrets, private pain (no matter how deeply it moves me or makes me think or gives me perspective on my own journey) is not mine to share. So I’m effectively denied writing about part of my own experience, which irks me, but eh, it’s all for the best.
When I was writing about The Ex back when we were married, I felt that my marriage was totally mine to write about. I have no secrets myself (I wrote about my panic disorder and miscarriages in great, raw detail, and I’ll tell you any embarrassing or private or shameful thing you’d ever want to know about me), so I may not be qualified to decide, but I hardly think the fact that the man wouldn’t use a laundry basket was private. Some people wondered that I’d just say whatever I wanted to on the Internet about my husband, and they thought I was effectively talking shit behind his back. My position was that I never said anything on the web I didn’t say to his face, and since it was a public forum he was welcome to read it if he wanted to.
So to recap: I will keep things off the site if they’re secret, or private, or might hurt your feelings, or because you asked me to, or because I haven’t yet said it to your face, or because you threatened to sue me, or because it’s totally illegal (like cocaine or something), but everything else is mine, damn it.
What I’m trying to say is that I really do try to be discreet as I write about what affects me, but the point is that this is my story. I use nicknames for nearly everyone and will always remove anything someone asks me to – I’m not trying to out people, I’m trying to tell my story – but sometimes my story comes from yours. And if you know me, you know that you’ll eventually end up on goblinbox.
Which brings us, finally, to yesterday’s post. I wrote about public knowledge that affected me directly – I mean, my gawd, my household was all atwitter over the fight between my roommate Truck and his boss, The Ex. It happened right in front of my face, and involved parties who talked to me about it, too, so I figured the story was both harmless and mine to tell.
Ooops.
In other words, the guy that The Ex and Truck are currently contracting for? Yeah, you guessed it, he reads this site! So it turns out I narked The Ex off to his employer, because the boys didn’t go to work on Tuesday!
It’s very, very bad blog form, I have to admit. I mean, does anyone ever want to find out their boss knows they weren’t at work due to brown bottle flu? I think not!
I probably deserve to be spanked or something – it’s a good thing we’re divorcing. Now I have to hide for a few days whenever there’s a chance The Ex is here dropping Truck off after work! LOL!
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Lol. Aaaah, small town livin’. It’s a love/hate thing.
Tru dat. -m
Dude – it’s not your fault they played hookie. If they lied to their employer about it, the employer would probably have found out eventually anyways.
Also: you did not mention that you knew they skipped work. Employer obviously did some thinking on his own.
I had no idea they’d skipped work. Well, I knew Truck was home, but there’d been A Fight dontcha know, so it was entirely possible that The Ex was at work but hadn’t come for Truck. Plus, I pay no attention to where The Ex is on workdays anymore. Ah, the complexity of it all! *lol* -m
“If the topic is common knowledge, I can write about it.
If the event took place in public, it’s common knowledge.
If I’m telling only my experience or my reaction to something, and obfuscating all identifying details, I can write about it.
If I actually saw it my very own self, I can write about, but I may have to remove all identifying details.”
Yeah, I’m afraid that even the most strict application of that criteria can look a bit like swiss cheese when you get down to populations as low as 10,000 people in a town you can stroll across in 20 minutes. Such interesting social politics in lil’ ol’ fairpatch.
I know I know I know I know. Jeez. -m
“Also: you did not mention that you knew they skipped work. Employer obviously did some thinking on his own.”
Yeah, but come on, Mush clearly catalyzed the bust. So what if they would have found out otherwise; that doesn’t mean you jump in to help. Jesus. lol. I’m sure even Mush will agree. 🙂
To clarify, there was no “bust.” Alex doesn’t care. He’s not even their boss boss, they’re contractors working on a remodel! *giggle* Now I’ve really blown it all out of proportion! -m
I’m going to have to carve in stone your six commandments of blogging. But I’m not as open as you are about everything on my blog – who I am, where I live, etc. Still, people I know read my blog and I have to edit every fucking word. I want to have an anonymous blog where I can rip on them if I feel like it! And the secrets thing — man, those suck. I hate them, too. It’s better to be happy and ignorant than burdened with the separate “truths”.
I really never intended to be quite this open… it just evolved. I started keeping a web site because my employer gave all the people in my department their own little web sites so we could learn HTML and FTP and FrontPage (we were supposed to start supporting web hosting, but we never did). When I realized that I really enjoyed it, I bought a domain name. (When goblinbox went up, I had maybe 12 friends and relatives who visited; I kept up with it for myself, because I enjoyed doing it.) Eventually it got really well-indexed and I started getting hits from search engines. Then I had a bunch of miscarriages and wrote in great detail about them (the pages with the most hits are all about miscarriage symptoms). Then I made a bunch of online friends, and they became regular readers.
Now I get 10k hits a month, but all this personal crap has been on here for so long that I have no idea how I’d ever sanitize it without combing through every page manually. Not to mention that some of the truly big bloggers – Dooce, for instance – publish revealing details about where they live, too. I don’t think it’s particularly dangerous, but it does limit what I can say about my IRL community. -m
Yeah, laziness + paranoia = very superficial and pretty dry blogging over at Squirrelville most of the time. And I don’t have a fraction of your readership.
Dude, I have 89 people reading goblinbox via RSS alone! SO FUN! -m
Well, jeez, it’s not like I was pissed off that they didn’t show up. I even said that in my comment on the other blog entry. And, as I recall, the only thing I mentioned to Teh Ex was that I read about the drunk fight. I mentioned it because it reminded me of a similar fight between Truck and Tom R. years and years ago at Gyno Central. Boys and booze… bad combo.
I never thought you were mad, not for a second. Nor did I think that you’d judge or that they were in any way compromised. (It just mostly reminded me that what I blog about, even in all innocence, can have unforeseen repercussions.) Also there was a possibility I might get shit about it from teh boyz. Hah! 😉 -m
Where the hell is Tom anyway?
Far’s I’m aware he’s in Wyoming, raising two kids with Devi. -m
tchah! it’s their shit to deal with. considering the size of the community that you live in his boss would’ve found out that he’d skipped out because of being too hung-over eventually anyway.
i agree with you about censoring one’s entries because of other people’s privacy, and even, sometimes my own. there is much i don’t write about but i have been known to chat about it…brad knows that 🙂
Yeah, I know it’s their shit, and I also know the guy they’re working for doesn’t care either way.
Oh yeah I’ll chat ’bout shit to one person I won’t blog about for thousands! 😉 -m
Believe me sister, I feel your pain. Try writing about Karachi–200 people, all of whom go back (via family links) for about 200 years, and it all gets super-messy super-fast. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stopped posting as frequently as I used to; hell I’ve even stopped going out as much as I used to.
I always found it amusing when Anonymous would write, in the comments on your site, that s/he ‘knew who you were.’ So ominous. And yes, small inbred towns doth suck, yea verily. 😉 -m
As much as one tries to, it’s really hard not to write about other people sometimes. Granted they are characters in the book, we write about things the way they see us.
That’s kinda crazy a lot of people in your town knows about your blog. I don’t think I’m quite ready for it yet.
Here and there, I get worried about mine if the family discovers mine (though the chances are slim) Thing is they really can’t be upset about what we write and if they do, quit reading then, ya know!? Feelings change everyday, and it’s okay if we vent if this or that person pissed us off or whatever, but it’s usually only at that one time. Next day, we love ’em as usual.
Am I making sense? Anyways, thanks for being open on your blog and I hope you keep on doing so. Granted blogs can be for so much, much more, I don’t think I can have mine any other way but writing about things that happen, the way I see it and how they affect me.
*Gives Mush a hug just because*
It’s true that sometimes one just wants to vent, and the anger isn’t permanent, but I can see how reading something on the web could be more hurtful than hearing it firsthand. *hugs Kris back* -m
It’s a tricky subject. When I first started blogging, it was under my own name. Then my blog was found by someone at work and forwarded to management, and I went with aliases. Which I hated. And even with aliases (because I didn’t use aliases for my DOGS), a post wherein I bitched about some friends was found, and caused a huge rift we’re still recovering from. I found when my blog was truly, painfully personal, people couldn’t deal, either and slipped away, or kept reading in uncomfortable silence. Which is why I’ve gone the way I have, which is totally public, on my main website, under my own name. And the self-censoring happens before I even start typing. I’m comfortable with that, just writing more of a column than an online diary. I didn’t realize what a burden juggling all the considerations and worrying about anonymity was until I didn’t have it anymore. It means I pass up a lot of opportunities I previously would’ve written about, but a lot of those were negative rants written in the heat of the moment, and I think perhaps it’s more soul healthy for me to not put the energy towards that. That is to say, I’m not feeling it as any great loss.
Sometimes I get irked that I “can’t” post something I think I want to post. Like evil rants about people I know, or detailed descriptions of sex, or gossip. But in the long run it’s worth it, which is what I think you’re saying: presenting as yourself isn’t all that bad, really. Plus, those topics tend to be one-offs, and this really isn’t that kind of blog. -m
I called my man my “boat-bitch” on my blog last week and got a phone call almost immediately from him about it. Gawd, you can’t do anything fun abnymore
Boat-bitch! LOL! And yeah, ain’t it the truth? -m
LOL. Sorry but it’s your blog and you don’t have to pussy foot around everything in case someone who knows someone who knows someone might read it. Small town life definitely plays a part in this tale, no doubt. I use pseudonyms and such on occasion but mostly not. But then again I have a much smaller readership than you, lovey.
Fame is *such* a burden, yo. *lol* -m
I don’t have so many criteria – I ask myself “Is this going to hurt or upset anyone IRL who I know reads?” and “Do I care?” and try to roll with it from there.
But … my family don’t read. Or don’t admit to it – I suspect that my MIL has recently ‘found’ me; but as she won’t admit to it, I am not self-censoring at all. And it’s turned out to be quite a good way to get across things to her that I can’t actually come out and say … :).
LOL! Silly MIL. Well, until you forget she reads and call her a nasty bitch or something. -m