Week Two: there are federal agents outside my house


The FBI are spying on us, watch Citizenfour if you don't believe me. Whether or not it's true, it brings influence to my motto when it comes to my image online: it's already there. If someone wants to know what I look like, they can easily find out within a half-hour at most if they know where to look. Now, does this mean I am / should be honest about EVERY ASPECT of my life? Absolutely not. I'm not giving out my extremely personal information. But my birthday, what I look like, the city I live in? Although I've been more private about some of these now, if you really want to know badly you can find it if you look hard enough.

So with that in mind, why WOULDN'T I feel comfortable writing about how I'm feeling? Might as well, given that the FBI are spying on us anyway. Why would I do it? Well beyond this class I don't keep a public online journal. But I do participate in several private online chats (wouldn't call them 100% private but they're a lot harder to find than other stuff I've mentioned) and I only actively participate in them because I know that the people reading them care about me. They're my friends and they want to know how I'm feeling.

This week's prompt is very focused on wanting to know why people would want to read this stuff. Well, essentially the answer is "they aren't". If I post a twitlonger on Twitter, I doubt most people are going to read it. I certainly know that it's hard to prove that unless I get a reply from someone. But people post this stuff because they're interested in knowing how we're feeling. It's all about the connection. We want to think we're all friends so we write about how we're feeling hoping other people will feel the same way and tell us that. And the more we consume this kind of stuff, the more that it influences the way that we write. We want to become better writers so the only way to get better is to keep writing.

Now if only I could write about something that's actually important...

Comments

  1. Truffle SaltJanuary 25, 2021 at 8:11 PM

    Hello, I completely agree with you that not every aspect our life should be shared on the internet. Who knows exactly who is reading our content? That's the tightrope we walk with online journaling. How can we be personal without getting too personal?

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  2. Taking a BackseatJanuary 26, 2021 at 8:18 AM

    I don't think that is a pic of Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, but I just always make the connection between him and Ironman. I didn't watch the entire Snowden piece you added, but I am familiar with his plea and charge, and I think it provides a good context for your post. You make a perfectly reasonable comment that we can find out anything we want to through a Google search, or so it seems. I marvel at people who have no footprint. Take for example this person I went to high school with; nothing - no address, no Facebook, Twitter, etc... She has found a way of having her info splashed for all to see. I just want to know where life took here - I am curious, so your comment about knowing how she feels had me thinking about my true reasoning for doing a search in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
  3. december1210January 27, 2021 at 4:50 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. december1210January 27, 2021 at 4:54 PM

    First of all, just by reading the title of your post I was immediately drawn in and wanting to read more which is a major strength in your post in my opinion. I also think that your use of the connecting image in your post helps to create a sense of humor, and voice to match your content which I have enjoyed thus far. Secondly, I like the statement you wrote stating that posting online is "all about the connection" and this is something I really agree with. I think that a major influence for having an online diary opposed to having your own personal written diary is the idea that posting online has the ability to connect the writer with a variety of readers, as well as other writers. Furthermore, I think that this could also have an affect on what the writer is writing online where other people can actively read their writing, compared to hand writing on paper that is not being shared with the whole world.

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