Blogging and exhibitionism

A very interesting post over on Nia’s blog.  Some quotes from the newpaper article she links:

These days, if it’s in our heads, out it comes, edited to varying degrees into words and pictures, and presented to a real or imagined audience. Self-important? Perhaps. Often tedious? Certainly. But that doesn’t matter as much as people make out. Even if there weren’t the vaguest of ironies in newspaper columnists wondering why people feel the need to share their views on life with anyone, it does seem time to move beyond the sneering accusations of Pooterism that traditionally form the basis of mainstream media attacks on self-published alternatives. If all we had to worry about in this brave new world was preposterous self-regard comingled with a comic lack of self-awareness, then it might be an idyll indeed.

Far more intriguing, and progressively alarming, is the degree to which we have embraced the new exhibitionism. An early term for bloggers – back when it was a frightfully niche pursuit and the internet was all fields and so on – was “escribitionists”, and though the word was never what you’d call common parlance, what it stood for has become common practice as personal sites and social networking communities have exploded.


How odd, I found myself thinking recently, that in an age when we seem more and more concerned with encroachments on privacy, we are so increasingly keen to invade our own. . . . Time and again, in surveys of what young people want from their online experiences, keeping socially connected is ranked way above privacy. . . . But the view that this is a cultural shift with which we must all make our peace is wrong. Naive and cavalier is a dangerous combination, and a disdain for their own privacy will leave young people immensely exposed.

Well, I’m not quite as concerned about the lack of privacy — because it’s privacy of a separate identity/persona.  Any blowback would be to “Chevalier” rather than my “real life” self.  That wouldn’t be insignificant, and I occasionally find myself self-censoring a bit and/or worrying about what use others might make of my musings here.  Particularly during that dust-up with AHC. But it’s still less than it might be.  So the concern about my privacy may be less than concern that I am demonstrating (whether reality or percetion) ”preposterous self-regard comingled with a comic lack of self-awareness.”

The inappropriate invasions of privacy here are more often of other people’s privacy.  I do mention occasionally (or obliquely refer to) things others do or say that is not in the public domain.  Not really fair to them, I guess, even though almost always: (a) it’s positive, or (b) I don’t mention their name.  Sometimes other people may know about whom I’m talking, even if I don’t use their name.  Even if no one else knows, the person in question likely would.  (Assuming, of course, that he or she stumbled across this blog and the specific comment.  Not all would; the readership here, at least among those here in Dallas whom I might discuss, is not all that high.)  And it might cause hurt feelings or feel like an invasion of privacy.

This is a generic difficulty that goes far beyond blogs, of course.  Even if there were no blogs, there are review and discussion boards, and a lot of “private” activity is discussed there — and associated, often, with specific names.  And beyond that, there is a lot of “back channel” discussion.  I’m not sure whether the P4P community is that different from the larger community, but we definitely like to talk about each other.