Anonymity

I'm watching that new show "quarterlife" on NBC. The underlying story is about a girl who creates a blog and gets herself in all this trouble for telling her friends' secrets to the world. Her blog is a video blog and she makes no attempt to hide who she is or who she is talking about. Clearly she missed Blogging 101.

I've had this blog for like 3 years or something and nobody has found out who I am unless I wanted them to. Only friends I've told about it know where it is. You can search my real name until you are blue in the face and never find it.

Outting yourself or your blog is fine, if you know you are gonna keep it clean. Some people do that very well, like wildernesse, for example. Other people out their blogs and then regret it cuz they can't talk about who or what the want to freely (I will keep my examples to myself on that one). Then there are Live Journal type people who can out themselves and then selectively lock entries so that they can control who reads what. LJ freaks me out in this sense. I have at least 2 friends with LJ and I often wonder if there are entries that I've been locked out of. Of course, there are ways to get around the LJ locks, even without hacking ability, so they are risky.

But no matter what you do on your blog, I think it's inexcusable to reveal other people without their permission, ya know? Using another person's real name or picture is a total blog faux pas. And pretty much everyone in the blogging world knows that. (Although I know at least 1 person in my law school class who learned it the hard way.) So, I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to really get into a show based on someone so stupid, ya know? Especially if her friends are gonna keep forgiving her for so blatantly exploiting them and revealing their secrets. It's just completely unreal.