Internet Identity Crisis

[saffronlie]

I started using the internet back when no one was really quite sure what it was and how to negotiate its complexities. The catchcry was ‘safety’, the warning phrase, ‘anyone could be out there’. My parents constantly warned me not to give out my name or address, or any other identifying details. You never knew who people were

Comments

[pandorasblog]

I've been thinking about this stuff lately, and I'm actually going to switch to a new LJ account for most purposes soon

[saffronlie]

That's a big step to make. I'm quite interested in the switch: will you maintain the two accounts or abandon this one? Will you take your fandom friends with you, or try to maintain some distance? This is probably a good choice to make, and I'm pleased that you've been able to make it and protect yourself.

[pandorasblog]

I'll keep this one alive for maintaining the odd comm I've made with it and posting on the selling comm where I have a reputation, but at some point I'll probably hand all of that off to another account which will just be for those functions. Long-term, I'll never delete pandorasblog but I'll private-ize the entries.

But NewAccount will have all the friends I have now, and will basically be what my current account is - a chance to be fannish and deal with health TMI on the internet, but without mentioning anything outside of my own journal that could narrow down the region of the UK where I live/otherwise use unique signifiers.

Part of the plan is to ask friends, when adding the new account, NOT to refer to NewAccount as pandorasblog or by my actual name, because a distinctive name is a PITA when it comes to anonymising...

[ukashi_goshi]

Excellent post. It is a strange world we're in, isn't it? I love the privacy of the internet, because it allows me to be so very public. I can write freely here about things I'd almost never talk about IRL (sexuality, fandom, mental illness, etc). And it's so easy to compartmentalize online life. I'm an active user and a moderator on a parenting board (and given that I'm a SAHM, I guess that counts as professional life??? :/ ), but there's a lot I don't reveal there. LJ is more like my "real" life - though actually there are parenting things I wouldn't talk about here, because I have so many non-parent friends here, and the parenting stuff would either be incredibly boring or come across the wrong way to non-parents. Either way, I have NO interest in social media and being out there under my real name.

But of course, I'd probably have to change my mind about that if, like you, I need to use my real name for work. Good luck navigating it all. (And I wonder what the scene will be like in another 10 years or so!)

[saffronlie]

Aw, interesting how you're already kind of split, with what you reveal on LJ as oppose to what you reveal on a parenting board. I have a RL friend who, from what I can gather, also moderates some kind of internet parenting community, and has several internet-to-real-life friends connected to that community. That's all I know though, and it's been tempting to try to figure out more as she's been having massive personal issues lately, and I've wondered if perhaps she was more open about it on the internet than she has been with us. But there's no way I would actually try to breach her privacy like that; I respect her and the boundaries she's set up for herself. There is something fascinating about what people choose to share online. I know for a while my siblings would check my LJ and make fun of it, and for all I know my parents figured it out from when I lived at home and was lax about security on shared computers. Meanwhile my boyfriend used to have an LJ, which he 'fessed up to and let me read (it was not juicy), but he says he has

[iskra667]

OK, my opinion on this (but I'm a little uptight and image obssessed ;) is: on my course, we have a blog to promote our work because indeed an online presence is important these days, particularly in culture/academia/freelancing and such. And it pisses me off big time when one of my classmates talks about her family on her art blog. WTF has it got to do with it? It sounds unprofessional, like she did not do her homework research about how to use her blog. That's just my opinion

[saffronlie]

Oh, you're absolutely right. If I want to seriously enter academic blogging, I will have to set up a whole new blog for that. LJ is simply not the place for professional blogging. However, at this stage, I don't actually want to do that. I'm still trying to work out what I want, but I think it might be this: to write about my work on public LJ posts when I want to without being worried about who might read. I don't want to direct new readers/academic bloggers here, but I don't want to be embarrassed should they stumble across this LJ and connect it to me. So I might have to lock some old posts or something.

That's a good idea for blogging though, to write about cultural interests critically. I'm not on LinkedIn but I suppose it's time to get with that. So far I've managed to avoid Facebook for networking but I can see how that would be a problem. You can control who sees what to some degree, but it's not as easy on FB as it is on LJ or Google+. It's all so difficult.

[peachpai]

Merging the two for me is the scariest prospect ever, and I have a strong paranoia about anyone from my professional life and some from real life in general finding out about what I do on here because of my lingering shame for being a hopeless fangirl (even if that is completely ridiculous). I do use my real name for twitter and professional blogging, though, so I understand the interest in having one, simple internet identity. You are a brave soul indeed for considering this!

[saffronlie]

I think I'm going to "un-consider" it so cancel that 'brave'! Hehe. But it's good to know that you've managed to keep your professional identity and your fangirl identity separate. I agree that we shouldn't worry so much, but we're not being paranoid, given how the media loves to portray Twilight fans and all that.

[pointedulac]

I'm having trouble keeping my blog/twitter/google+/facebook seperate, since they all seem to connect back to my real name, but I'll always leave LJ off that list. It's a personal preference.

Even though I can filter out, say, my mom, I don't want to her to see my info, user groups, or know my LJ name, and that goes for most people.

I like having a place to bitch and moan when I need it, and to geek out at insane levels when I need it, but I don't need those things connected to the rest of the internet. That's just me though.

[saffronlie]

That's becoming how it is for me, too. I'd ideally like to keep LJ separate, but not worry so much about someone connecting it to my other identities. I guess that calls for some self-censorship, whether that means locking old posts or locking even more future posts. Like you, I need LJ sometimes for things I just can't do elsewhere.