Personal Blogging: The Dangers of Too Much Information
posted by Daniel Solove
Former Gawker editor Emily Gould has an interesting article in the NY Times Magazine about the perils of revealing too much information online:
It’s easy to draw parallels between what’s going on online and what’s going on in the rest of our media: the death of scripted TV, the endless parade of ordinary, heavily made-up faces that become vaguely familiar to us as they grin through their 15 minutes of reality-show fame. No wonder we’re ready to confess our innermost thoughts to everyone: we’re constantly being shown that the surest route to recognition is via humiliation in front of a panel of judges.
But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.
At her blog, Emily Magazine, she has a post about reading my book, The Future of Reputation, on the subway: “If I saw me reading that book on the subway I would think it was funny too.”
May 25, 2008 at 10:46 am
Posted in: Privacy (Gossip & Shaming)
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Responses (1)
Jon Garfunkel - May 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm
There’s also an adroit observation on the reciprocal nature of being in the gossip industry:
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