welcome stranger, come here often?
So the other day a friend of mine wrote me a quick email voicing her shock at the fact that someone who she had never heard of, an anonymous housewife from Nebraska (or some such place) had posted a comment on her blog, saying how much she had enjoyed the family photos that my friend had posted a link to. My friend was a little concerned that this stranger had been reading her blog, her journal, her personal thoughts.
Now, aside from the question of why my friend would post things on the internet that she didn't actually want anyone to read, it seemed to illustrate very well the strange nature of the internet. This ability to interact very intimately with complete strangers anonymously. Sort of.
There are what? A billion people online? And there are countless ways for those people to contribute to this online world. Weblogs (like this one), Photo blogs, personal websites, company websites, joining discussion groups, even selling their attic-dwelling refuse on ebay. So how would anything that you do ever be noticed in the sea of digitus out there? But that's the thing, everything I write here, or post of my photo blog, or anytime my photos are posted somewhere else, there's a record just a google away.
Or forget google, post your opinion somewhere where the lonely and internet obsessed (that would be me) will see it and suddenly 1,000,000 people will drop in and visit and listen to what you have to say, reveal how stupid/brilliant/boring/cool you are, and then promptly forget about you. Only to track you down again 6 months later to follow up on your brilliance/stupidity/coolness/lameness. And it's all only a google away.
I just read an interesting little piece in Wired where a journalist tracked down the guy who originally made up the "hi I'm Bill Gates and I'll pay you $1,000 to forward this email to 1,000 people" email. Some guy, at a university computer lab in 1997 jots down a few lines as a joke for a friend and unleashes an internet typhoon that is still going today. And, of course, it's pretty easy to track him down, and call him up, and ask him: "what the hell were you thinking?"
So I guess we should all be careful what we put up there. Or decide how anonymous you really want to be.
1 Comments:
Yeah, but the thing is you can't google my site. That's why I was shocked that this person got onto my website. So I thought about it and decided what kind of things I would feel comfortable posting, and am still experimenting. Now I'm not surprised if someone drops by. Although eventually I might take the family photos out...I still thing blogs and such are a wonderful way to keep in touch and share ideas (especially if people share their opinions in the comments sections). As you enjoy the medium, I suppose you also think about what the implications are. So far I've been really enjoying sharing my thoughts and ideas this way, it's a rewarding, strangely enough, bonding experience, even, with friends and friends of friends.
By the way, I was scanning other people's blogs on blogger and one person purposefully doesn't post links to their weblog because of privacy reasons. I don't know what that means but it seemed she was implying that by posting hyperlinks, it made your web site more accessible to others? I don't know how this works, I suppose and that's something I'm still trying to understand.
However *YOU* my friend, are, in fact, findable through Google...:) Cheers and thanks for a thought-provoking post.
V
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