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puppetmakerThe Topic for the week:
Whose LJ is it anyway? Balancing personal expression and friends-list sensibilities in determining content.
Which I am putting behind a cut to save my friends list.
This is a topic I have been thinking about for a while now for a number of reasons. I have a pretty extensive list of people that I keep up with via their web log and they keep up with me through mine.
I started by web log to keep my parents and close friends apprised of what I was up to and what Caroline was doing since she was changing from day to day. The place where my original web log was and still is runs off my husband's site. He started his web log while I was still pregnant with Caroline. He even had a contest for the readers as to when she would be born and how much she would weigh and her gender (which we did not know beforehand).
I knew early on that my web log was going to be read by people I have never met or only knew from my encounters with them on the Internet. Because of my husband's regular column in Comic Buyers Guide, I had gotten use to the fact that people remember things he wrote about that concerned our lives. And I knew what I wrote would also be remembered by people that I might met at a convention or other social situations. So I have always been a self-censor while typing things that go out into the Internet. I know that whatever I put here could come back and bite me on the rump.
I got on Live Journal because my younger sister (my only sister) had one and it was an easy way to keep up with her. I found out that other friends were here as well and pretty soon I had a friends list made up of people I knew. Then I started adding friends of friends that I liked to read. And friends of friends added me to their list. I have never hid who I was and who I was married to nor did I make a big deal about it. And eventually some people who were fans of his added me usually after asking me it was OK. I added people I met in communities that I enjoyed reading and it blossomed from there.
Now I had hit a point where I had quite a number of people reading me that I didn't know. And I made a decision to put a couple of layers on my live journal. I don't have too many entries that are friends only. A lot of those are memes that I just want to share with people who have taken the time to add me to their reading list. But there is not much I have put out here that I don't mind that others know. I do have a private list for things that I need to put out of my head. I also have a paper journal that I use for my "brain dumps".
Things I try to avoid are profanity (I tend to use slang or fake words), offending the various religions of the people who read this (which can be walking a tightrope), and politics (because I have seen what it does to my husband's board). But those who know me probably have a pretty good feel where I stand on things. Most people know I am an ardent defender of the 1st amendment along with my husband. They know that I am an old school Whovian along with a number of other fandoms. People know my love of puppetry and doll making and costuming.
I have adjusted to being a rather public person. I can even speak to a large group and not feel uncomfortable which was not always true. I look at my web log as speaking to a large group of people and adjust what I say accordingly. So it's my spot on the web and I'll say what I want to. I don't force anyone to read it nor do I get upset if someone decides that my web log is not their cuppa and so far that has worked well for me.
Whose LJ is it anyway? Balancing personal expression and friends-list sensibilities in determining content.
Which I am putting behind a cut to save my friends list.
This is a topic I have been thinking about for a while now for a number of reasons. I have a pretty extensive list of people that I keep up with via their web log and they keep up with me through mine.
I started by web log to keep my parents and close friends apprised of what I was up to and what Caroline was doing since she was changing from day to day. The place where my original web log was and still is runs off my husband's site. He started his web log while I was still pregnant with Caroline. He even had a contest for the readers as to when she would be born and how much she would weigh and her gender (which we did not know beforehand).
I knew early on that my web log was going to be read by people I have never met or only knew from my encounters with them on the Internet. Because of my husband's regular column in Comic Buyers Guide, I had gotten use to the fact that people remember things he wrote about that concerned our lives. And I knew what I wrote would also be remembered by people that I might met at a convention or other social situations. So I have always been a self-censor while typing things that go out into the Internet. I know that whatever I put here could come back and bite me on the rump.
I got on Live Journal because my younger sister (my only sister) had one and it was an easy way to keep up with her. I found out that other friends were here as well and pretty soon I had a friends list made up of people I knew. Then I started adding friends of friends that I liked to read. And friends of friends added me to their list. I have never hid who I was and who I was married to nor did I make a big deal about it. And eventually some people who were fans of his added me usually after asking me it was OK. I added people I met in communities that I enjoyed reading and it blossomed from there.
Now I had hit a point where I had quite a number of people reading me that I didn't know. And I made a decision to put a couple of layers on my live journal. I don't have too many entries that are friends only. A lot of those are memes that I just want to share with people who have taken the time to add me to their reading list. But there is not much I have put out here that I don't mind that others know. I do have a private list for things that I need to put out of my head. I also have a paper journal that I use for my "brain dumps".
Things I try to avoid are profanity (I tend to use slang or fake words), offending the various religions of the people who read this (which can be walking a tightrope), and politics (because I have seen what it does to my husband's board). But those who know me probably have a pretty good feel where I stand on things. Most people know I am an ardent defender of the 1st amendment along with my husband. They know that I am an old school Whovian along with a number of other fandoms. People know my love of puppetry and doll making and costuming.
I have adjusted to being a rather public person. I can even speak to a large group and not feel uncomfortable which was not always true. I look at my web log as speaking to a large group of people and adjust what I say accordingly. So it's my spot on the web and I'll say what I want to. I don't force anyone to read it nor do I get upset if someone decides that my web log is not their cuppa and so far that has worked well for me.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 06:56 pm (UTC)I guess I gave up caring what other people think of me back in High School.
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Date: 2008-01-15 06:58 pm (UTC)Hey you know I love your opinions *grin*
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Date: 2008-01-16 04:31 am (UTC)Sadly, the Internet lacks that look of shock/horror on its face when I commit a faux paus.
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Date: 2008-01-15 05:02 am (UTC)And, it's time for bed.
~cheers~
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Date: 2008-01-15 07:02 pm (UTC)PS: We loved Juno. We got a screener before it was even in theaters and it has become Ariel's favorite film of 2007.
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Date: 2008-01-15 11:08 am (UTC)The 'only' filter I have is "friends only". I'll never refer to anything to do with Laura or the divorce in an open entry, and only rarely in friends locked. That's not what my blog is for - if I need to whinge at all, I'll do that to friends, not online.
I'll rarely talk about work, and even then, it'll almost always be under a friends lock.
A friend once said that I'll answer almost any personal question (in real life if not online) but getting me to volunteer anything is like getting blood from a stone; he may have a point.
Like you, I'm not a fan of swearing, and since my son sometimes reads my blog, (but doesn't click - as far as I know anyway - on the friends link) I ask that people moderate their language in their replies to public entries on my blog.
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Date: 2008-01-15 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 09:47 pm (UTC)And thanks for the kind words about the writing - much appreciated.
I need to get back to fiction writing - that thriller ain't going anywhere on its own.
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Date: 2008-01-16 04:51 am (UTC)I have no idea how old he is, and I don't want to freak you out, but I've been telling smutty sites (basically written porn. usually softcore, the harder core writing is pretty laughable because it's poorly written) that I'm old enough to read them since I was 15 (I'm now 21, so I no longer have to lie anymore).
If he has an account and he's given his correct birth year, LJ will automatically lock him out of racier posts (again, assuming that your LJ friends have correctly tagged their posts as inappropriate for anyone under the age of 14, 17 or legal adult). And, so long as your son isn't smart enough to log out of his account and make a new one lying about his age, he should be alright content wise. To be honest, it *never* occurred to me until the past year or so to blatently lie about my age (claim I was born in the 1950s), and I've only done so because verifying that I'm old enough to read adultfanfiction.net is a pain in the ass. I have to specify a month, date, year and then sign my name. It's gotten to the point where I just click any random month, date year (usually somewhere around the 1950s or the 1940s) and type in random letters to the 'signature' portion.
I often find the whole "inappropriate for someone under 14" rating amusing, since you have to at least be 13 in order to *get* an account.
Again, I don't know how old your kid is, but as a suggestion, if you're worried about what he reads online, I'd suggest talking to him about your concerns. And then offering to discuss anything he has questions about. Because there are ways that kids can run across things their parents don't approve of accidentally (geocities used to run pretty racy ads, last I saw, Facebook does too).
I'm only suggesting that because I got all my sex education from the Internetz, simply because my parents were not okay with discussing sex with me. I got a book instead of an actual discussion on what *really* goes on during sex. All the book told me was the uh...'insertion' part. It never told me why the hell you'd want to do that. It never told me what lead up to that. I had already read my mother's smut books (Catherine Coulter = All the awesome!), so I figured foreplay was part of it, but because I don't believe anything from just *one* source, I wanted to know if the foreplay part was true. The sex ed book didn't tell me any of *that* all it gave me was the insertion.
And I was all "...that's it? So *how* do you get there?! Are you just sitting around, watching TV and then you're all, 'Hey, let's stick tab A into slot B and make a baby!' 'Okay!'" I didn't get the *why* you'd want to, simply because my mother was too much of a coward to *tell* me about foreplay leading into the insertion. And about how you have raging hormones to urge you to move *into* the foreplay.
Which, had I been a boy, I might have known right that part right off the bat. The part I wouldn't have known was how to make it good for the girl, because my dad's not comfortable talking about sex either, and I'm sure it wouldn't be any different if I were a boy. I'm sure I would've only been informed about the insertion part and nothing else. And I'm sure that being a boy with raging hormones, I would've had the guts to say "well, that's all well and good, dad, but HOW DO I CONVINCE A GIRL TO LET ME INSERT IT?!" Because that's what my 8th grade boyfriend was the most interested in. How to get me to have sex with him.
< /end advice >
But like I said, I don't know how old your son is, or what your relationship with him is like, so I'm basing all this off assumptions, and please don't be too harsh with me if I'm insanely off the mark [[hides]]
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Date: 2008-01-15 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:35 pm (UTC)Two days later, my boss called me into his office and gave me a rather stern talking to, telling me that one of my coworkers (whom I trusted) had passed the link around as an amusing anecdote about the client, which got forward to the wrong person, and to him.
I then learned that in the course of two days, nearly every person at work had read as far back in my journal as they could go... personal rants, etc.
That was the first time I locked my journal down tight... and left it locked until I was no longer employed (and needed a wider audience for emotional support).
Not writing anything was stifling, but you are smart to not write at all.
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Date: 2008-01-15 07:09 pm (UTC)This whole Internet thing is rather new to us but will be old hat to our children who are going to be rather savy going in.
Caroline already knows not to tell people where she lives.
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Date: 2008-01-16 05:21 am (UTC)I say that they deserve what's coming to them (because you're told not to give out your address for a reason)
btw: Tell your daughter never to give out her phone number with area code as well ;) People can find where she lives by that way too. And unless you have a common last name like Smith or Jones or whatever, she shouldn't give that out either. And if she has a first name you made up (see: Nackereia), she might not want to give out that either.
The Nackereia thing is a pseudonym I made up for myself, and it works fine, since it's not a real name. However, if it were a real name, it could be linked up with a last name, and even if the last name isn't so common, it could still be linked up with a phone number on a contact sheet or something.
Also: if the 'net is going to be her social life, she should only post in public places that have moderators (read: forums Here's an example of one (http://otcentral.com), though it's quite possibly aimed at an older audience, depending on how old Caroline is).
She needs to *avoid* any and all Chatrooms. Even if they claim they're about Spongebob; they're not. They aren't usually moderated (at least, they weren't when I was 15), and most pedophiles target chat rooms because that's where the stupid children go. The children who don't know that someone who's asking "a/s/l" (Age/sex/location) is probably a raving pedophile claiming to be a young girl, and is looking for a picture of you practically naked and wants to know what *exactly* you do at slumber parties. The children who *don't* know that only psychotic men ask you *exactly* what you do at parties/want to see your underwear (and 14 year old boys who haven't learned that girls don't have wild orgies at slumber parties count as psychotic men in this case).
< /net savvy >
You totally can't tell I've been on the 'net since I was 15, huh? :D
I don't know if it's because my middle school had kids who had learning disorders, or if middle school boys really are psychotic once they get all the horny and notice that girls exist, but dude, they're fucking creepy. I was reading through some of my diaries from being 13, and was reading about how this one boy thought I looked sexy. Maybe I'm a huge prude, or maybe it's because I'm petrified of my own body/sexuality, but that freaked me the hell out. The whole idea that I was hanging around a bunch of horny psychotic boys during middle school just freaks me out. Ugh!! It's like feeling I've been leered at by...by a cross between the 'standard' image for plumber and a 'standard' image of a construction worker with greasy hair. Eww!
I don't think it's fact that the boys were huge horn dogs that's the most scary, though. I think the most scary part was that this all went *over* my head. I'm sitting here now, panicking about all the situations I could've been in simply because I didn't realize that my peers were pedophiles (which, yes, I know you're not a pedophile until you're 18+, but there's no other way to aptly describe people who are turned on by you that just creep you out).
Like, I now know that this one boy had fantasies of me writing all my sexual fantasies in my diary. Which I'm sure I will laugh my ass off at someday, but for now I think I'll continue feeling creeped out/violated. Violated because I don't *want* to be anyone's sexual fantasy, kthanxbye!! Especially anyone that I couldn't even *remotely* begin to have any form of romantic relationship with. Ughhh!!
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Date: 2008-01-16 05:04 am (UTC)I think that's fucking ridiculous. If I were a boss, I'd punish the idiot who passed around the link, not the moron who wrote their private life in public. Simply because the person who wrote their private life in public was not the idiot who passed out the link. I feel that whoever passes out the link around the office is 50 times more worse for doing so than anyone who writes about their job/co-worker on the internet.
I feel that so long as you are not posting to your blog at work (or even during working hours), and you aren't linking to your blog at work (or being really dumb and not changing any names; and I'm not talking about changing the name "Dell" to "Smell," but rather changing the name "Dell" to "large computer/electronc manufacturing chain."), then you should not be held responsible for what's in your blog at work.
Of course, I feel this because I'm 21 and not some stuffy 40 year old (my apologies if you're that stuffy 40 year old. I'm truly sorry you're no long as groovy as me! lol, j/k ;)). What my age really has to do with this, is that I've grown up with the Internetz (even though I didn't have it until I was 15).
I'm a strong believer in the 'if something doesn't affect how you work during office hours, then what does it matter?' type thing. I'm a *huge* believer in bosses not having any say in what employees do on off time (so long as they aren't being really stupid by stating real names of clients, co-workers, the company, other companies, etc. as I've stated earlier). And I'm a huge believer in not being held responsible if someone else outs your blog. Especially if it's obvious that you in no way associated the company with your blog, such as Heather's case.
Last I looked, Heather had a category where you could see the posts that caused her to get fired. It was only obvious if you worked with her what co-worker she was writing about. Otherwise, she never mentioned any names, never mentioned the company (to this day, she refuses to tell people who she worked for, she just says that she worked as a Web Designer in LA...or maybe it was San Fran...oh well, it was California, all the same).
If you're the one that outs your blog, however (either purposely included a URL to it in company email/passing around the URL via company email, or posting online during work hours, even if you're at home legitimately sick/posting online using company resources, etc.), then I feel that you have what's coming to you.
Of course, I'm also a Libra, so I'm big on fairness. Which, I know most of the business world/political world isn't (why else are we putting Americans out of jobs by outsourcing? It's certainly not out of 'fairness').
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Date: 2008-01-15 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:23 pm (UTC)-Your own words being turned against you.
-TMI (too much information).
-Strangers as friends.
-Identity theft.
All reasons I leave my posts public (with very few friends only) choosing to instead censor myself. Reasons I don't discuss my family or work. Reasons I don't discuss my medical conditions that I don't want people knowing about. Reasons I don't post personal information in memes that could be passwords or application forms' data.
To be honest, I'm shocked anyone includes me in any form of an inner circle on LJ. I'm flattered and I'm not asking you to disown me or anything, just stating I am shocked.
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Date: 2008-01-15 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 12:50 am (UTC)Of course I've heard of Doctor Who. But I know zilch about it/him/them.
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Date: 2008-01-16 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 02:23 am (UTC)I really enjoyed reading it and I avoid politics as well even though it's one of my passions.
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Date: 2008-01-16 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-16 08:22 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
The only filter I have is the "friends only" tag, and that's mostly to hide my work stuff and things that may not be appropriate for younger viewers.
I figured if I was going to be out here, I was going to be out here. On some level, I found it safer. Also, it allows me to form better connections with people like yourself.
BTW, I'm hoping we get to meet up this July at the event of the century. :)
Thanks for letting me in.
*HUG*
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Date: 2008-01-16 09:40 pm (UTC)I switched to "friends only" because someone was trolling a number of my friends at one point. I wanted them to feel safe somewhere -- hence, my journal.
I also try not to swear or write anything too inflammatory. I learned the hard way how words can return and bite you *sigh*
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Date: 2008-01-17 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 11:17 pm (UTC)KilljoyKilroy was here (http://n-decisive.livejournal.com/207506.html).Well done
Date: 2008-01-18 06:47 am (UTC)