Protecting Privacy in Fandom
Some of you know that before I became a poor, lowly student, I had a rather nice job with a software company that was attempting to deal with some of the problems surrounding personal privacy and data ownership on the 'net
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In general, am more concerned with keeping RL out of fandom than fandom out of RL, but I believe it requires enforcement from both sides -- by not letting your relatives spy your LJ name over your shoulder and by being careful with your real name in fandom -- trying to limit the number of people who can connect the two.
I don't appear on anyone's friends lists, either any more, but I'm not entirely happy with that scenario. Having roamed around the south of the country for most of my adult life, there are a lot of people I've lost touch with who I'd love to find again, and Facebook was the best chance of doing that. But it's swings and roundabouts and there's got to be compromise - for me, protecting privacy has got to come top.
I think it's very difficult when there is something in your life that you want to share with people who truly are friends, even if they don't know your full name, address and bra size (no, wait, they probably do know that, thanks to copious numbers of memes ;)) but it's something that is unique to you, i.e., the publication of a book, which is tied very strongly to your identity. I would love to tell everyone about the products I've worked on because I think that the kind of people I know on LJ would find them interesting and useful, but it just can't be done, unfortunately.
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LOL It's probably really scary what people know thanks to memes!
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