Tuesday, December 2, 2008

ELUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE BLOGGING

Okay, so you don't want creeps ogling you or your children.

You are irked by someone walking up to you in the grocery store and saying, Hey, I know you! I read your blog, and I love it, but that recipe you posted for Baba Ganoush needed more garlic.

And you don't want some Photoshop-savvy pervert taking your head and pasting it onto some porn star and putting it on our beloved Internet for all to see (even though her body is much better than yours). (My mom said that one actually happened to someone in their ward.)

I get it. I respect it. For you, I think it's the right thing to do.

My anonymous-but-not husband would sing (but not dance, for he has no rhythm at all, bless his heart) a song of joy if I made Remarks from Sparks a private affair. But, just now, I can't make myself do it; for had my blog been private, there are so many friends, from high school and from college, that I wouldn't be back in contact with. If only for that reason, a public blog is an acceptable risk for me. (The Husband will cringe when reading that, and I will hear about it later; especially since I just mentioned that he'll cringe.) For as it has been said, when I graduated from high school, I essentially dropped off the planet.

So if taking your blog private is what you feel you need to do to in order to protect your family, go for it. Just please don't expect me to know what's going on in you life. It's probably a good idea not to reference it in an email or a conversation thinking that I know what you're talking about. The context just isn't there.

See, my Google Reader doesn't check private blogs, and if it isn't doing the checking, the likelihood that I will remember to mosey on over to your private blog to check it myself is slim, no matter how much I like you or how much interest I have in photos from your son's last field hockey game or details on your grandmother's second hip surgery. I have a hard enough time remembering to check my mom's, and hers is funny, informative, and directly applicable to my own life.

'Cause of course, rather than remembering to visit all the blogs-gone-private, I have waste my time and brain power reading all the public blogs that I don't actually care about that I, for some reason I no longer recall, added to my RSS feeds and am too preoccupied to execute the click-scroll-click to delete.

Why can't those ones go private and save me the trouble?

3 comments:

M to the E to the R to the I said...

Fine then, be that way. My blog didn't want you reading anyway.
;- )

cat+tadd=sam said...

Thank you for reading my mind, typing it up on your blog, and allowing me to read my own mind's thoughts.

[Morgan] said...

i'm so glad you posted this. i can't say that i'll never go private, because you should never say never.
and i do think about it sometimes, each time a blog goes private i feel a little guilt that perhaps i'm not protecting myself, okay it's really just my kids that i worry about, like i should. but, then i remind myself that there are millions of bloggers, mommy bloggers at that, and the chances of someone seeking me out strictly because of my blog just doesn't seem all that probable. am i wrong?
my husband is so annoyed with private blogs or websites. he thinks that the words private and internet don't go together. i can't say i disagree. if you don't want to chance it being out there, then don't chance it at all.
and while i do continue to check those private blogs on my lists, i admit it's not nearly as often as those who email me in my reader.
i have to ask though, and seriously, do you think you'd feel differently if you had children? would you post as often about them and their lives as you do yours? granted you don't post many pictures so it's probably not a real concern...