The Anonymous Blog
Most people out there in Blogland have opted to go anonymous. It gives them the chance to say things without worry about the fallout, so long as no one ever finds out who they really are. Freedom from consequence has a powerful attraction.
There are of course drawbacks. For the most part, blogging is an activity that involves commenting on things that happen in our everyday lives, and it doesn’t take long before we have written about enough different aspects of our existence that it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone who does know us to decode our secret identity. At that point all hell could break loose – relationships fall apart, jobs are lost and regrets are huge.
So in order to keep your anonymity you might have to start creating a fictitious background to throw people off the scent, but this is much harder than you’d imagine: as well needing to be extremely creative, you have to have a damned good memory. I had this thought partly in mind when I made that first crucial decision in setting up this blog: whether to chose a nom de plume like “The Purple Slug” or “The Time Thief”, for example, or to be upfront about the fact that it was me, Kim Ayres, and no one else. I don’t really believe that honesty is always the best policy, but with a memory like mine it does tend to be much easier.
I am assured by many of the friends and relatives that I am in regular e-mail contact with, that they keenly read, and even enjoy, my blog. However, none of the buggers ever leave a comment so I guess I’ll have to take their word for it.
I am happy for my writings to be read, commented on and even criticised. But over the past couple of days there have been times when I really wish I could pour out my soul and rant and rage against people and circumstances, and it is here that I realise the restriction of the open blog. There are some things that my wife would not be happy about becoming public knowledge, and there are some things that even I know would not be appropriate to reveal. But for the drawbacks outlined above, there is little point in setting up another, anonymous blog.
So, some of it gets written and then left on my laptop, unpublished, and some is never written down at all. And the nearest I get to revealing anything, is writing about anonymous blogs.
There are of course drawbacks. For the most part, blogging is an activity that involves commenting on things that happen in our everyday lives, and it doesn’t take long before we have written about enough different aspects of our existence that it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone who does know us to decode our secret identity. At that point all hell could break loose – relationships fall apart, jobs are lost and regrets are huge.
So in order to keep your anonymity you might have to start creating a fictitious background to throw people off the scent, but this is much harder than you’d imagine: as well needing to be extremely creative, you have to have a damned good memory. I had this thought partly in mind when I made that first crucial decision in setting up this blog: whether to chose a nom de plume like “The Purple Slug” or “The Time Thief”, for example, or to be upfront about the fact that it was me, Kim Ayres, and no one else. I don’t really believe that honesty is always the best policy, but with a memory like mine it does tend to be much easier.
I am assured by many of the friends and relatives that I am in regular e-mail contact with, that they keenly read, and even enjoy, my blog. However, none of the buggers ever leave a comment so I guess I’ll have to take their word for it.
I am happy for my writings to be read, commented on and even criticised. But over the past couple of days there have been times when I really wish I could pour out my soul and rant and rage against people and circumstances, and it is here that I realise the restriction of the open blog. There are some things that my wife would not be happy about becoming public knowledge, and there are some things that even I know would not be appropriate to reveal. But for the drawbacks outlined above, there is little point in setting up another, anonymous blog.
So, some of it gets written and then left on my laptop, unpublished, and some is never written down at all. And the nearest I get to revealing anything, is writing about anonymous blogs.
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