overlap

The internet's a funny place. One of the things I like it for is the opportunity it provides to deal with content over style, in the sense that if you're interested in whatever I'm waffling on about and you search for that, you might find me here, but if you're, say, a colleague just interested in sticking your nose into what I'm up to, then you won't find it by looking for me. And even if you did find me from the content search, you wouldn't necessarily find me identifiable.

And that matters because it's only that anonymity that means I feel comfortable with being open about things that are important to me, although the truth is I've already become far less open online over the last couple of years, and losing a friend or two along the way already leaves me increasingly reverting to type and keeping my counsel far more frequently than I might prefer.

Against this background, you might imagine my lack of amusement at being found on F*ceb**k, despite my efforts at obfuscation, by someone I know from the real world. Begging for "friendship" from everybody they've ever met is perhaps not the end of the world, and to be honest I'm surprised to have even been searched for by someone who I don't particularly consider a friend, but with whom I'm on what I guess I'd call reasonably friendly but nothing special terms, and whom I run into a couple or three times a year.

After years of gradual adjustment to even limited public exposure, I'm not prepared to surrender my hard-won ability to discuss my TVism or anything else for the benefit of what little F*ceb**k actually offers me, and much as I don't always feel entirely convinced of it, I do know I shouldn't be prepared to live in fear. And if isolating content from identity is the only way I can make that balance out for me, then that's the end of my F*ceb**k adventure, and it's for the best with this very limited amount of impact rather than whatever else might follow further down the line.

// posted by uber @ 2:48 pm