Comments on: Another Reason to Blog

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 06:25:11 +0000

Ive always envisioned a blog as being sort of a salon ala 18th century… and myself being a fleeting Madame de Stael…..

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 06:02:55 +0000

Mocking someone by claiming their enthusiasm is boring is so five minutes ago.

By: Astarte

Astarte — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 05:29:04 +0000

…and blogs will one day bring about world peace.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 02:59:27 +0000

Yawn all you want — people who have been doing this for awhile understand how important it is to develop ethos. And once you have credibility in your publicity (and an audience) most don’t want to lose it.

It may not matter from the outside, but I think that other longtime bloggers get a feel for what the dude at gaping void is saying up top.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 02:10:15 +0000

I think thats a bit crazy. Alas, words like “credibility” and “reputation” just make me yawn.

By: Kathryn Cramer

Kathryn Cramer — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:56:09 +0000

It seems to me that, given how search engines work, those with no online presence to speak of are much more vulnerable to having their reputations ruined online than those with a more established presence. And those whose presence is pseudonymous are always vulnerable to outing, whereas those who have always appeared unmasked cannot be outed unless their public personae are substantally at variance with the onlone personae.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:50:50 +0000

I really should have said that communications technology is in the process of making the developed world transparent enough to evolve trust for those of means etc. Turn on the real; turn on the liberal self-hatin'.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:46:20 +0000

Old man Robert Putnam and his friends would never have called it “increasingly essential” – they would argue that these trust mechanisms have been essential since the beginning of society, existed (in America) in the past and have been steadily eroded as the small-town paradigm has died (a victim of greater mobility, immigration, increase in commuting time et al.). Obviously the blogosphere is no small town (or Greek agora, to make a more hackneyed but appropriate comparison), just as craigslist is not the cork message board on the public library’s wall.

It may be that that communication technology has made the world transparent enough to evolve trust, yet large enough to avoid the condemnation of difference that defines “small-town” – or at least large enough that no one need suffer it alone.

By: The Heretik

The Heretik — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:27:27 +0000

Anonymity, the shield that makes some honest, is also the cloak some lie under. Upside and downsides to turning your insides outside to the world and to be an outsider no longer. We are what we say and do.

By: Dylan

Dylan — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 00:58:59 +0000

This is exactly right, though I’d never really thought of it in those terms.

I know that the permanence of what we write is one reason why some people do it anonymously. I can’t say I thought of it before hand, when I started blogging, but I’m kinda glad that my real name is associated with my blog. It keeps me honest and serves as a self-editing tool. These words we right stay out on the internets forever, and it should require us to take a second before pressing publish to make sure that we intend to stand by everything we write.