Metablogging, the Internal Editor, and Infamy

Firecracker’s Husband (whom I will temporarily dub Rat-Smasher for reasons dating back to the days of yore in Boston) is working on a great project I’d like to promote. I love it, but realized that I’m hesitant to name private “real” names on the blawg, and this particular project is littered with his. I haven’t discussed this with him yet. . .

Anyway, I started wondering why I feel the need to protect people’s privacy in that I wouldn’t overtly associate them with the blawg, which, frankly, ain’t that mysterious. But given that, I started wondering about the character of my particular blawgdiance, i.e., the readers – specifically, who are they?

I had intended this to be largely a quasi-public record of my time applying to and attending law-school. I was hoping it would serve to update my friends to the trivia of my life, while creating something I could (even if all is not disclosed, which, believe me, it is not) later access that would remind me of the path I’d taken. It was never meant to be a “literary” blog in the sense that I’d be consciously crafting a distinct virtual persona and providing a more or less consistent output/product to attract and maintain readers. I figured people who knew me would log in and read (perhaps between lines on certain days) and have a sense of where I was, what I was doing. On the other hand, there’s been a definite counter-pull for a more public and consistent voice from readers (whom I don’t know from elsewhere) who have asked me to write on specific topics and who are full of poetry questions. (Per Gioia, “Poets command a kind of residual respect in American culture, like a priest in a village of agnostics.”)

IL and I chatted about this a bit – there seems to be a computer savvy culture here at GULC, plenty of blawgers (noted by ai) but actually little or no public acknowledgment of blawgging, despite numerous references to web-boards, services like Friendster, etc. The upshot is that I’m really not sure who reads the blawg, or for that matter which people connect “the biological me” with The Scoplaw (it’s really no big secret).

So – anyway, if you know who I am, you don’t have to avoid the topic of the blawg – it’s not some kind of nasty little secret. In fact, if you (whomever you are) are reading this, do me a favor – write in (or post to this thread) (or stop me after class) and say “hello, I read the blawg now and again”.

Comments

[pjm]

The reason for not putting a full name (or, say, a company name) on has less to do with concealing it from one's readers, who will probably figure it out or be able to, than it does with obscuring it for Google, which Sees All. I posted in July about the death of my high school swim coach, and since then I've become the #1 Google result for his name, and have heard (positively, thankfully) from what appears to be most of his family and several friends of his. The Law of Unintended Consequences is not to be tempted lightly.

...but you knew that.