Anonymity When Blogging

I had recently read Spinsterella's blog about her anonymity on her blog. Only one of Spinsterella's real life friends knew about her blog. This is because she didn't want any of her real friends knowing too much about her personal life or what she might write about them.

I sometimes also wished I had an anonymous blog. That way, you could truly write what you wanted about anyone or anything. But in this day and age, its very hard to remain truly anonymous on the Internet. Someone somewhere will recognise your blog stories and piece together who you are. People who try to remain totally anonymous and blog about everything, including their work and work mates have been known to get fired after the employer found out. I don't write about anything specific on work at all. If I mention things about work, its usually about events that occur with friends from work and what we do or say to each other.

When I first started my blog, I wrote a lot more honestly and didn't think twice about the types of things I would write. Now as I know who is reading my blog, I do tend to re-think whether I should write something. I guess it was all my own fault. In all the excitment of starting a blog, I actually wanted friends and work mates to read it so kept telling people the web address. Now, its too late to turn it all back and say "Oh don't read it, because I might write about you in a not so nice way".

It's strange how people like to complain about others and let a third party know. I was, as one friend calls it, "whingeing" to him about another friend. This friend then said whenever I start to do that, he just switches off and doesn't listen. I then said, "That's ok, just pretend to listen, I just need to tell someone". This friend then also proceeded, in a much more subtle manner to "whinge" about another person. My response was that I didn't care to listen to his complaints either. Then a few days later, this friend proceeded to either consciously or sub-consciously "whinge" about the same person, again in a very subtle way. I later asked this friend why he did what he did after saying that he didn't like to listen to my "whingeing". Also I posed a common question that he alwyas asks me "What are your intentions behind your actions". I really want to find the answer to this question. "Why do we feel the need to let others know when we dislike something someone else does to us." Do we want empathy, revenge or do we all just like to gossip. I don't really know why I "whinge" about others and would like some insight into why I feel the need to do it so that I can stop it.

My own rules when writing on my blog is that I generally write nice things about people. If I really need to write something not so positive about someone, I will do it in as a vague a fashion as possible, not include names or say its a story I heard. If its personal stories that others share with me and I want to blog it, I will ask them if its ok with them. Generally the answer is yes, with some wanting to remain anonymous while others don't mind.

To round it all up, I think blogging is a good way to share my feelings but it's a double edged sword. I want people to know who I am so that I can communicate with them honestly, but then sometimes I want to write critical pieces on people and thats when I wished I was anonymous and could write anything. In the end, everyone that blogs in a critical way, in my opinion, want something from their readers. If you really were writing for yourself only, you could always write in a book and keep it under your bed and no one would ever see it or know about it even. We're all selfish in the end and want to achieve something personally out of writing a critical piece, what it is, I'm not entirely sure and would love some suggestions.