Social Media person Joyce Dierschke wonders:
I'm not, myself, a big believer in total honesty in social interactions. When I ask someone how they are, it is only in rare cases that I'm actually interested in details. I don't want to hear about a casual acquaintance's digestive troubles, for example, or the bitterness of messy divorce in a grocery store line.
It is a fool, I think, who bares all to more than a small group of highly trustworthy individuals. In the increasingly generalized social media universe -- where FaceBook pages are attended not just by friends, but by relatives and old buddies from years passed and people who are, really, little more than casual passers by -- it would be nearly suicidal to not self-censor.
While lately I've been wondering if it's time to connect this blog to the rest of my life, every now and then I post something that would outrage people who know me -- only a trusted few of which are readers and occasional commentors. If I do abandon the shroud of anonymity -- and I likely will in the next few weeks -- this will become a very different blog. The reason is that I'll care more about what people who read it think, because those people will have an influence over my real life.
Self-censorship is, I think, an entirely necessary social function, whether one is using social media or not. We all know people who don't self-censor, and while they can be entertaining at parties I, personally, don't really like to stand to close to them. And I certainly don't tell them anything of consequence.
One of the appeals of Internet anonymity is that you don't have to self-censor, but as social media integrate into people's lives self-censorship will become, again, integral to social survival. That social media are part of the big, universally available, almost universally searchable web is one more reason to be careful.
Social media will inevitably need to develop levels of access. That is, FaceBook will have to allow not just friends, but best friends and secret friends and all the different kinds of friends each of us has in real life. This will allow us to self-censor in certain company, while mainting what has previously been known as intimacy in other. No matter what, in most circumstances some sort of self-censorship is an absolute necessity.
" The reason is that I'll care more about what people who read it think"
What? You don't care about what I think???
(In my best Moe Howard) "Why I oughta...!"
:)
Posted by: Steve | 03/12/2009 at 11:22 AM
Suggestion: you may want to start a new blog if you plan to associate with yourself in public.
There are things you've said here, over the years, that you may not wish to be seen with in perpetuity.
Posted by: PhoenixRising | 03/12/2009 at 01:48 PM
"if you plan to associate with yourself in public."
Nice. Very nice.
Posted by: Wally | 03/12/2009 at 03:31 PM
I'll tell you one area where I'm uncomfortable with FB. I had a situation where one of my FB friends who fancies himself a philosopher posted a link to a survey that indicated that the numbers of people who say they are religious is declining. He went on to point and laugh, essentially, at all those silly, misguided people who still believe in God. I responded at length, and the discussion went back and forth several times. I thought later on that I should have had the conversation via private email instead of on his wall. Social media can lull you into such a sense of intimate communication, when really you're out there for the world to see. And now that I'm blogging, it's even worse. I googled myself the other day and I was a little alarmed at the number of hits that came up. I knew this stuff going in to it, but I'm not sure if I really KNEW it. Ya know what I mean?
Posted by: Cathleen in NL | 03/13/2009 at 09:08 AM
Yah, I googled you too Cathleen, and really....well. too. many. jokes. head. exploding!
Posted by: pursuit | 03/13/2009 at 09:27 PM