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Blogger anonymityI presume that most of you blog in solitude. Sure you might blog in a coffee shop or at a public internet terminal, but for the most part it's just you, your computer and your thoughts. I work in the computer lab here at PTS and I inadvertently stumbled upon something that you may find interesting about anonymity and blogging.I was posting a comment not long ago on my friend's blog when he came into the computer lab and started talking to me. Now I am a rather garrulous fellow, even in the lab, but I was taken offguard when he encountered me posting comments on his blog. I felt as if he had opened the door while I was going to the bathroom or something... it was almost an embarrassing experience! This experience has caused me to reflect on the nature of blogger anonymity and cyber-community. We all read the comments others post on our blogs, so the evidence is there that others actually post comments. But to have someone barge in on this sacred interaction felt a bit invasive. My friend is not to blame; he had no idea that I was posting a comment on his blog. But nevertheless, it taught me something about this shared community we enjoy under the veiled cloak of cyberspace. My friend, Todd, will be preaching about missional community on Sunday. And I imagine that he will be referring primarily to community-in-the-physical-realm. I am all for face-to-face relationships, I'm no hermit. Though it feels as if there is something sacred about engaging another's thoughts on a blog. Through the internet one may enter into solidarity with another and this exchange has meaningful implications. Yet, this anonymity is not blind. We engage with strangers thoughts through recommendations (links) of those whom we already trust. Other times we experience formal introductions to strangers (references in a post). So when we create a blogger identity and post a comment on another's blog we risk a little bit of ourselves. We dare to engage the other. I know these thoughts are a bit sporadic but they are my feeble attempt to share this blogging insight. Peace. posted by Jake at 1/14/2005 01:24:00 PM  
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Perhaps the invasiveness of such an event-being "caught" blogging- is a result of the intimate nature of what blogging is. It is a private conversation in a public realm, where time and space allow for a carefully formulated comment or response without the akwardness a traditional conversation may bring. Maybe we're bolder in our blogs than in our "real" conversations. But then again, unless you blog annonymously, accountability remains. I am intriqued by, as Jake said, that "there is something sacred about engaging another's thoughts on a blog." Often, (I myself included), we read other's sacred thoughts, but keep our responses private. Or, share blog ideas in person. I wonder, is this the purpose of blogs?-to serve as an impetus for person-to-person conversations, or if the allure of private conversation, where boldness in written word is easier than in spoken word, is preferred? I'm curious to see what others think, especially since I do not have a blog of my own and these are random ideas and questions I have.
I think there is both annonymity and self-revelation at stake in the task of blogging.
As to the latter, every time we post something it is painfully public...and saved in the archive of the internet for anyone to look up and throw in our faces 50 years from now. There is a permanence and a nakedness that comes from formulating something that others will read.
As to the former, there is annonymity in the respect that you discussed, Jake, but there is also another kind of pseudo-annonymity. I use the "pseudo-" there as a tip of my hand, because I think historical works such as the Pseudo-Dionesian cannon are examples of my point. These are works that are out there in view, but that ultimately do not lead back to a identifyable author. Part of my way of looking at blogs is that no matter what stupid thing I or anyone else posts, the next second, I or they may be able to say it in a better way,to formulate the thought with more nuance, or to disown the thought entirely. I never expect a blog post to contain the full wisdom that one could bring to bear in writing it, because blogging is more like a conversation than is traditional publishing. It is somewhere between publishing and interpersonal conversation - a new level of discourse - and I believe that this level of discourse provides endless possibilities for us to better ourselves and each other.
Those are my two cents, whether or not that are precisely on topic, and whether or not I would want to say the same thing 10 minutes from now...
(ptsblog.blogspot.com - come see my recent post on the Emergent Church)
It is ironic to post a comment on a blog that generally disagrees with the practice. In this case it can't be helped.
For a little while I was keeping up with some conversations on theooze.com. I posted a couple of thoughts, got a response, responded in kind, which was completely ignored. Pseudo-anonymity is a good way to put it. No matter how we sign our posts, they are always pseudonymous, always read as being written by pseudo-authors. In writing there is enough slippage to rhetorically create a persona. And we all do it, even if we sign with our own name. This "mask" allows us to be more bold at best, to lie at worst, and to be engaged or ignored without responsibility. Whether this is the actual practice of certain online communities or not is not the issue. But it is my feeling that online communities who have met each other in person are more charitable.
I suggest that nothing can replace the face-to-face encounter of the other, a face that is never really seen in cyberspace. Virtual reality entails only virtual responsibility. In all writing, whether online or in physical print, there is an absence. Derrida would, following Heidegger, descry the "metaphysics of presence" and the "privilege of presence" in Western thought. The text is not a substitute for the presence of the author, and the pseudo-anonymity of cyberspace highlights the difference in communion between the text of an author and an author's presence.
At any rate, why should we feel embarrassed by being "caught" responding to a weblog? If anything, should it not be more desirable to speak face to face? If the feeling of being caught posting on a blog is like that of a voyeur being caught, shouldn't that tell us something? I most object to the labelling of blog posting as "sacred." Why sacred? Cherished, perhaps. Private, certainly. Personal, of course. But "sacred" does not mean these things. If it is sacred because "through the internet one may enter into solidarity with another and this exchange has meaningful implications," and that the substance of this interaction is "engaging another's thoughts on a blog," we have reduced the person to the words/thoughts of that person. And this is emphatically NOT engaging another person, but only their words/thoughts. The thoughts of a mind do not a person make.
In the end, while I admit there are levels of intimacy involved in blogging, I think the anonymity is greater. "So when we create a blogger identity and post a comment on another's blog we risk a little bit of ourselves. We dare to engage the other." But how much of ourselves can we risk when we "create" a blogger identity? What other can we actually engage if others are "creating" blogger identities as well?
I blog, but I have no illusions that my writings can substitute for my presence. I do not blog for community, I blog for myself. I blog to write. I blog to express, but not (literally) to communicate (commun-icate), though I am quite aware of the irony of my saying so in a blog post. And when I read blogs I read them not to be in community, but to read. I read blogs not to be in the presence of the author, but to enjoy and engage the mask that I encounter in the text, the implied author one might say (but even that is too much). But something is fundamentally different when I read the blogs of people I know. I don't often respond to their blogs online, but rather when I see them next. I prefer to discuss blog posts in person. I prefer conversation to writing. And writing is not conversation; writing is not speaking.
At any rate, them's my thoughts. Sorry if I sound a little harsh. What can I say, that is the mask I have adopted. And if I misunderstood anything that was written in the post or responses, let me apologize, but then again, that is the problem of responding to a text rather than a person.
Blessings,
Andy