I was looking at my ‘Profile’ elsewhere on the web yesterday (I won’t tell you where because then I’d have to kill you). I never fill in all the blanks on these things, only ever providing just enough, I hope, to give an inkling of the type of person I am. As I changed and tweaked a few bits it occurred to me that the whole tone of the web page encourages you to reveal as much as possible about yourself, on the premise that the more other people can see about you, the more they will be encouraged to connect with you. It’s a nice idea, with sound logic, but it actually lulls us into a false sense of security.
Even people who really should know better get sucked in by this ‘arms around the shoulders’ feeling that we are all just part of a global community of happy clappy people, yet we all know, I hope, that this is simply not true. The nasties in life may not be physically standing, battering at your front door but they may well be effectively tapping at your window on the web, right now, even as we speak. You wouldn’t reveal all to the seemingly nice chap you just met at the bus stop, now would you? So why do it to millions of nameless, faceless people on the web?
I bet Sir John Sawyers (the article linked above) has had a word or two to say to his wife.
.... feeling war-torn and weary 
4 Comments
July 6, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Well said. Plus I enjoy firing a bard at my wife’s employer from time to time and too much information could be hazardous for job security…
July 7, 2009 at 5:55 am
*Exactly*. I’ve been writing on the web for a good 10 years now, in various guises, and a constant dilemma I have is that I often cannot say what I’m *really* thinking because if I reveal who I am those people I’ve referred to may be horribly offended. That’s why this blog remains more of a scrapbook of stuff that I like and generalities, rather than a blow by blow description of my life and the people around me.
July 6, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I’m pretty cautious about what I reveal. I want to be open and sincere, but not completely visible to people like my employer and some family.
July 7, 2009 at 5:58 am
Yes – the dilemma I referred to in my reply to slamdunk. Maybe I’m an irritable, bad tempered baggage but if I wrote what I *really* wanted to write half the time then I’d become a social outcast!