unpacking

[da_lj]

I had an odd thought recently; how people my age often rely on their parents and other older relatives to not be net-savvey. What would happen if that crazy aunt of yours [1] started commenting in your LJ

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

I often chat to my two kids on IM. This is good since we are many thousand miles apart. I expect eventually they will unravel my various net personae. So it goes!

[da_lj]

A very healthy and mature attitude, says I. :)

[melted_snowball]

You did write about the day in question yourself (though not the event that gave rise to "everyone has a crazy aunt").

[da_lj]

Thanks for the link. That was quite the evening.

[epi_lj]

I've thought on several occasions that if I ever have kids I want to have my livejournal printed as a bound book using one of the available services just so that when they're old enough to be appropriately traumatized, they can find it on a shelf somewhere.

[da_lj]

...and then they'll castigate you for your dead-tree ways.

And toss it into a 3d-media scanner, digitize and OCR the text, and grep it for the salacious bits. ;)

[anonymous]

I have to admit that I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, as it has come up on several levels:

- My brother has gone through some angst about the thought of his parents finding his blogs.

- I worry that my LJ might have cost me a job offer recently.

- I have lots of deeply personal stuff published publicly in my name, which students/employers/friends have stumbled upon.

- My friendslist (and lurklist) is kind of odd and it makes my brain hurt when I think about it for too long.

I do a fair amount of security through anonymity, too. Sooner or later that'll all become public knowledge as well. That's a little squicky. On the other hand, the reason I write for the web at all is to reach an audience, and there have been several positive developments that have come from me publishing stuff under my own name. (A high school reunion that I wasn't invited to, amongst other things.)

[pnijjar]

How fitting is it that I didn't log in to make that comment?

[da_lj]

Illustrated your point, certainly.

"Sooner or later that'll all become public knowledge as well." - I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. ...I do agree that anonymity is by no means a guarantee.

[pnijjar]

It means that search engines are getting better, and sooner or later they will be able to make the kind of inferences that will make it easy to track a person's writings down. Plus when one is interacting online, one inevitably gives away personal identifying information.

Mind you, it isn't that hard in my case already, as you found out when I decided I liked Muppets better than my privacy.