Blogging a Fine Line: How Much of your Soul should you Share?
This is something that has been on my mind for a long time. By that, I don't mean a few days or hours, I mean 7 years or so. It hasn't been easy trying to formulate these ideas into a coherent essay, but here goes.
Blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, etc. about personal things is easy to do. When you write impulsively from the heart, it's a very pure form of expression that occurs most naturally. Your blog--and I use this term to cover all forms of blog, even the micro-blog--becomes a piece of art. As its creator, it meant something to you at that point of time that you expressed it. You may not feel that way once you post it, but that moment of expression is captured and put on display for all to see and interpret.
When you post it on the internet, you are allowing people to see into who you are and how you're feeling at that exact moment in time. If you write something that touches them, they may feel that they want to get to know you better. Your audience might Google you, go to your website, and research other blogs/works/public expressions you might have made. It's basically a benign form of stalking; sort of similar to digging up information on your favorite celebrity.
Where it starts to get a little uncomfortable is when your audience starts to cross the line. Some people will read into your blogs and form a picture of who they think you are. This is especially uncomfortable when you're a female, and you start to receive unwanted and unsolicited attention, either online or in person.
I know that sounds sexist, but let's face reality. I have many female friends and colleagues working in male-dominated industries. Pretty much all of them have experienced some sort of "miscommunication" during industry-related events, with members of the opposite sex who read too much into their words or actions. It's an issue that has been going on for a very long time and will most likely always be an issue.
I have always loved the internet. My first experience with it was when I was a high school senior, and my big brother (then a college freshman) came home with inkjet printouts from the anime series Ranma 1/2. As Ranma 1/2 was my FAVORITE series at that time, I was simply fascinated by the fact that these wondrous images were available in that mythical land called cyberspace. It was a world filled with interesting people to meet and endless anime images to see, and it was definitely more interesting than my current realm of boring college-prep academia.
When I finally entered college, I couldn't wait to get my first email address. I loved PINE, the UNIX-based email client. I loved the sound of that 28.8k modem making that sound of keeeeeeeeRSCHHKXSXSHHH to signal a successful connection. I loved that flood of text that filled the screen. I loved being pinged by my friends and launching into a 4-hour text message exchange, even though it was so much more efficient to just call one another. I loved wading through the clunky, all-text bulletin boards, looking for my beloved anime image data files that I would download and translate into viewable JPEGs.
As my college years and image-based browsers progressed, so too did my reliance on the internet as a primary communication tool and medium of expression. It was my link to my family and boyfriend, both 3000 miles away, both who I saw as my links to sanity in the sea of college angst. My little brother (an 8th grader at the time) showed me the wonders of HTML, and HELL YES I was going to learn about web coding and design. Those text-based bulletin boards gave way to Netscape and Ultimate Bulletin Boards and more interactivity within the cyberspace communities.
In 1998, I was invited to become a part of the Fan Art Headquarters (FAHQ). It was a community where anime-based artists could interact, share critiques, post their art, and collaborate on community comic projects. It was an incredible talent pool for any comics publisher. Indeed, this was the Golden Age of the Online Anime Art Community, and this wondrous period lasted for a few years. (The tale of FAHQ and the Online Anime Art Community is its own fantastic tale to be told at another time.) I joined a few other online anime art communities that spun off from FAHQ, attended many anime and comic conventions, and met many people who eventually traced me back to my website. It was really a joy to be connected through the internet.
As far as my internet persona went, I really didn't (and still don't) have one. I have always used "P.M.B.Q." as my alias, because although there is an apparent randomness to those letters, they have a concrete representation of my full name. It's just a coincidence that it's gender-ambiguous, and this ultimately is fine with me since I prefer to be judged solely on the quality of my work rather than factoring in my gender. As far as "shaping" my image, I'm a pretty straightforward person who is a terrible liar. I'm just not a fan/player of mind games.
I enjoyed a few years of communicating fairly freely and relaxed on the internet, but this ultimately lead to a few bouts of stalking incidents. People who did not know me very well would give me unwanted attention, both in person and online. I really do attribute the "extra" attention to when people find out that I'm a girl, as I have never heard of any of my male counterparts getting the same sort of situation. Most disturbing is when I would receive email communication from people I did not know very well, writing to demand that I pay attention to them and become their "friend", not understanding when I didn't return emails. It's really not a cool situation, and I would not wish the situation on anyone.
It's a difficult thing to deal with. I like to think that I'm a pretty nice person, and I definitely try to be nice until negatively provoked, but these stalking incidents taught me that there is a consequence to acting freely and impulsively. As a result, I stopped being as open at conventions and have been pretty quiet online for several years. Again, I felt it was more important to return to my basic philosophy of letting my work--comics, web design, graphic design, etc.--speak for me. Also, I really did not want people (males in particular) to misinterpret friendliness for romantic interest, so being a little cold and less of my natural self was the lesser of two evils. I think most women can relate to the latter.
However, as an artist, I continually feel a need to create and express across any medium that interests me; particularly, the internet, as it truly has been my passion for over a decade. Self-expression is actually a healthy mental well-being practice for anyone, and with tools like Twitter and Facebook it gets easier and easier. So, I'm taking the first steps towards returning to share information a little bit more publicly, even with the potential for uncomfortable consequences. There's a lot of information about art, design and life that I haven't blogged about for several years, and I finally feel that it's important to return and share that information out into the public.
Ultimately, I think blogging as a form of expression is a good thing. I do enjoy it; based on the millions of people using Facebook and Twitter, apparently so do you. Personally, I find the stalking situation to be the worst consequence, but it's not uncommon to hear stories about people losing or not getting jobs due to questionable online blogging and picture-posting. If we all practice a little self-editing and self-reflection to our actions every now and then, hopefully we can avoid the potential negatives of free online expression.