People are taking a very long time to adjust to a world where intimate social interaction is, at least sometimes, absolutely public, and where they have to consciously distinguish between matters that are 'private' in the sense that no one who doesn't know the speaker personally is likely to be interested, and matters that are 'private' in the sense that the speaker has a real need for them not to be publicly on record.
Yep. It's HARD to keep your mouth. Enough time will teach you to SHUT UP.
I think I'm pretty good at keeping my mouth shut about me myself and I. But then, there was time, long ago, in a galaxy far far away, where the guy was suing (in CA court, mind) a whole group of us for defamation over teh intertubs. He demanded my address online and I gave it to him. Couldn't manage to serve me, although I suspect he tried. (And me all ready with a venue challenge and a SLAPP and a summary dismissal for lack of evidence, to be followed by the infinite continuance.) So I was sittin' there all lonely and he decided that I was actually this other person. So I posted a picture of my driver's license... which sadly did not dissuade him of the notion that I was this other person. What can you do with a guy who believes in black magic java script?
That was pre-Google indexing EVERYTHING (although I set it up to be not indexed). Couldn't get away with that these days, which makes me sad. What fun we had.
There's a funny article in the New York Times
On an unrelated topic, the New York Times is getting malware flash ads from doubleclick again, apparently. I would not have known this if I had updated the adblock sub within the last day. Freaked me out - just not used to that with Firefox.
max
['So if anybody sees a page hijacked when all you did was click on an NYT link, that's the problem. Unless I haven't actually fixed it, in which instance it's still the problem but I don't know the fix.']
Cute story about the lawyer who'd friended the judge. FB as a tool of legal Darwinism.
The flip side of this is that the rising generation's standards of exposure will become the norm, to our prudish distaste. At some point, incriminating spring break photos won't be a problem, because the boss doing the hiring has them too.
I had the same experience at NYT yesterday. Using FF and flash block and ad block I normally don't see that crap. I was not happy. I yanked the Ethernet plug immediately and went into damage control mode.
Also in need of norms: quoting other people's non-internet conversations on the internet. This applies even to anonymous quotations, in some cases. In the early days of blogs, I used to bristle when a casual conversation wound up as fodder for someone's online reflections. Now, I just have a mental "blogger alert" when talking offline to someone I know keeps a blog.
5: Mmm. I pissed some friends off severely here once, talking about them. I didn't mean anything negative by what I said, but used slightly less diplomatic vocabulary than I would have talking to them, rather than about them.
They happened across the conversation and happened to bust me (not having known I blogged at all) and were really angry about it -- ostensibly because of the wording I used, but I think largely because of being discussed publically online at all. I apologized, and they accepted it, and we don't talk about the Internet now, and I think harder before I say anything about anyone identifiable.
People are going to get used to living in a panopticon, and thinking of things that they don't want to be broadly known as secrets, to be kept as such, rather than as simply 'private'.
Indeed. And it really isn't so hard.
Although I suppose I've gotten more lax with facebook than I was pre-facebook. But then again, I have less things that I would broadly construe as "secret" going on than I did 10 or 15 years ago.
I have a very hard time with it.
GOT NO PROBLEM TALKING ABOUT ME ON TWITTER THOUGH, DO YOU, SMART GUY?
9 ctd:
As evidenced by my ongoing online documentation of my most incompetent students.
11: Yeah, that's the class of thing I got busted for -- my anonymity is about the same class as yours, in that my identity's pretty transparent to a RL acquaintance who happens across the blog. Anyone who knows you in real life, how many soccer-playing/new-baby-having/Texas math-professors can there be?
So once someone you know for real sees you online, everything you say about your students might as well be signed.
I pissed some friends off severely here once, talking about them. I didn't mean anything negative by what I said, but used slightly less diplomatic vocabulary than I would have talking to them, rather than about them.
Boy oh boy, me too. Of course, I was saying something quite negative about my former best friend's relationship. That it turns out his fiancée webstalks me and reads all of my comments? only substantiates the negative things I said.
And then there's the thing where you write something that would be about an anonymous person were it not for the intervention of some helpful third party who draws the victim's attention to it even though you didn't mention their name or anything else ...
What's different about the internet from old-fashioned village is surely the speed with which news travels to strangers. There was that (c\lare s\wire) poor girl who wrote an appreciative note to a merchant banker who had spent the night with her, and he passed it on to 11 of his closest friends and ... the point is that millions of people read that, and it's on google forever, whereas in a small community I feel there was some chance it would have stayed secret. Perhaps not; perhaps the nearest equivalent is the scene in the MASH film where they mike up Hotlips and Frank Burns having sex ("your lips are so hot") and she is known as hotlips ever after.
So when I say that a relative of my wife's was married for some time to a woman known to the rest of the family as st\icky\kni\ckers because of an incident in the village where she lived, I had damn well better googleproof it.
You film yourself practicing with your light-saber one time and ...
practicing with your light-saber
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
verything you say about your students might as well be signed.
Or how mockable I find our young, sweet baby-sitters' Christianity.
The "panopticon" overstates the problem. We are not surrounded by prison guards whose only job is to watch you in particular.
Having lived in smallish towns, one key way to reduce the paranoia was to realize that very few people cared if you smoked pot or whatever (although there could be indirect consequences if most people knew). The question then became how not to attract the attention of those who did care, or strategies to cope when the interested became problematic.
Much of the post is correct, but maybe just restates ancient problems of living in a society.
Example:Nobody care about what was in my backyard until I complained about the neighbour behind me. Both of us got cited, and I learned a lesson.
Would it be catastrophic if (in a small American college) a college professor's comments about some unfortunate e.g. calc/ulus student were identifiable? I mean, I expect that the babysitters could cope eventually with sufficient counselling, but are there enforceable professional expectations about talking about students?
(I'm sort of surprised that there are such rules about lawyers in first-amendment-land, which partly motivates the question.)
Right. That's the solution for 'drunk pictures on Facebook' -- it'll shake out, eventually, such that they aren't meaningfully damaging. The hard bit about the transition is learning to distinguish between things that make you kind of uncomfortable if someone you didn't mean to read them happens across them (drunk pictures on FB), where the solution I expect is that everyone will relax a bit, and things that are a genuine problem for a broader audience to see (bitching about judges), where people are going to have to learn to restrict that sort of thing to the really non-public parts of their social lives.
The actual academics would know the situation better than I do, but I don't think there's anything enforceable out there. Lawyers are subject to a very stringent and explicit set of rules governing all sorts of aspects of their professional behavior. Most other professions aren't like that.
21: I think it'd be lurid and gossipy more than anything.
If heebie's student were identifiable, there might be a FERPA problem. No?
OK, so it's not (just) a brave stance against the panopticon. (23: isn't this affecting their private letting-off-steam behaviour? I thought that was the point.)
I've never been sure what the rules of the game are in any kind of academia. I had a colleague who was basically sacked when the Daily Mail revealed a sex scandal, but another set of colleagues who suffered no consequences when their students found a book recording bets by said colleagues that named students would perform badly in exams. All would have been much more fun on facebook.
23
The actual academics would know the situation better than I do, but I don't think there's anything enforceable out there. Lawyers are subject to a very stringent and explicit set of rules governing all sorts of aspects of their professional behavior. Most other professions aren't like that.
I wouldn't rely on this. Academics are quite regulated in interactions with students. For example I think blogging how about how hot some some of your students are or connecting their stupidity with their ethnicity could get you in big trouble if discovered.
19 is wise, but also understates the definitional quality of a panopticon, which is not that people are watching you so much as that you are visible and can't forget it. The guard tower is backlit. The guard doesn't have to show up.
There are a lot of things that get easier once you free your mind, but only a few individuals ever do that, and most of them who do, don't.
But with academia it's all basically up to the discretion of school administrations, isn't it? Whereas for lawyers, the ABA and the state Bar Associations have codes of behavior that you have to accept in order to be allowed to practice law, and, yes, those do seem to extend into off-the-job actions if they are sufficiently connected to professional considerations (see some of the defenses the lawyers in the NYT article tried unsuccessfully).
One thing has been the relentless march of search engine integration. There are certainly things that are now indexed and searchable from Google's front page that, at one time, were non-public or where one had to know how to search a specific forum or tool to find the information. Now conversations that took place 15 or 20 years ago on Usenet or on private bulletin boards or forums, say, are public and appear in search engine hits.
Right, the historical nature of this sucks. There are things that were said online with a reasonable expectation that they were going to be non-public except to a narrow group in the past, that are now public, and people who said things in that category are now kind of screwed through no incaution of their own.
But going forward, no one sensible has any excuse for being surprised that their words are out there.
I am so glad that Livejournal has the Friends-lock feature. I often go back and lock stuff for posterity, after giving it a month or so for my online friends to enjoy.
A student once found and sent me a picture of myself from a college play I was in, and when I went to the website, it turns out some dork we were friends with had taken a ton of pictures at drunken parties, totally unaffiliated with the theater group, and posted them all, tagged with our full names. When I contacted the current administrator of the site, an undergrad in the theater group, he seemed to have no idea why anyone would be bothered by it. He did agree to take off our last names, though.
The search engine integration problem has been really annoying, too, but it's weird to think that the "let's post every picture we can get our hands on to the internet" is now retroactive. There's no way that in 1999 I would have thought everything I did would end up on the internet.
30: Yes. Both the advent of Alta Vista and the subsequent release and searchability of the Deja News archive of Usenet had any number of people scrambling back in the day. (And later Google, of course.)
A really interesting event was when a whole big chunk of Enron e-mails got placed into the public domain as a part of some trial. One e-mail archiving company used it as a demonstration of their tool and offered prizes for the juiciest bits, and there were a few (and some politically interesting stuff as well). Plus tasteless joke e-mails forwarded with the names of folks who didn't even know anyone in Enron etc. A nice teaching moment in your expectations of privacy for anything digital not completely within your control.
Yeah, I have to admit to being pretty ambiguous about the ways in which search engines have blithely gone ahead and done this.
I've found stuff online that I wrote in 1989 [when I was 16 or 17] that I had no expectation would ever become public. Nothing, as far as I know, too embarrassing, and not that easily searchable just yet, but still ... irritating, I think.
I've also found notes from a recent meeting I had with a colleague, online. Which I suppose isn't a problem -- there's a recently developed culture of keeping work-blogs at my new office -- but no-one actually asked me if they go go ahead and post their precis of my comments.
The Enron stuff has been used in research etc. Not sure all of these still work, but as you can see it got some attention.
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I just had a tomato sandwich with a ripe Jersey tomato, homemade crusty bread, and homemade mayonnaise. Probably not worth the trouble to set that up on purpose, but with all the elements already sitting around? Really really good.
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I had capellini with an egg, and sauce made of chickpeas, tomato, and spinach. It was a pretty good lunch.
One problem is that control, such as it is, is in the hands of people most likely to have already moved past concerns about privacy. Which is sort of like having people who don't care about a sport making new rules for it.
31
... no incaution of their own.
Don't agree with this. The cautious path if you want to keep something secret has always been to tell no one.
Sure, but if your goal is to tell some people but not everyone, that's not so much a functional strategy.
I have not yet subpoenaed someone's blog comments, or FB status archive, but I look forward to doing so. Diaries and email are good, but the comments are going to be really indiscrete.
(Note: don't claim emotional distress in a lawsuit if you're having a clandestine affair, and keep a diary. Your deposition might surprise a spouse).
If we are on food, I had black pudding and fried egg for breakfast; and the veal meatballs are chilling in the fridge while I get ready with the tomato sauce.
I had Marshmellow Mateys cereal in milk.
The distinction in the OP between what's secret and what's private is odd to me: aren't these the same? Perhaps I have already long thought the private to be, well, secret.
31: There are things that were said online with a reasonable expectation that they were going to be non-public except to a narrow group in the past, that are now public
This is why I still prefer subscription email lists for dedicated, smallish groups: not google-indexed! Some idiot once reproduced some remarks of mine from a private email list on a public forum (i.e. his blog), complete with my full name, and I threw a very serious fit, of course. We learn things from this, sure, but we also need to be fairly serious about netiquette.
43: Note: don't claim emotional distress in a lawsuit if you're having a clandestine affair, and keep a diary.
Whoa! never thought of that, I'll stop now. This pseud is likely totally firewalled, right*?
*Says the man who recently joined Facebook under his (loosely held) pseud, garnered friends from that guise *and* his kids, and subsequently cchnaged it to his real name. And just yesterday the first extended family member found me (a cousin). I suspect I am in for a period of active choices in online identity.
Shorter 46.last: I have always depended on the netiquette of almost strangers.
48: I know, I know, but really. If you're participating in a private subscription-only email list, you ought to be (made) aware that the contents thereon are private. Private means private, etc., and I will hunt you down if you don't get that, or you will be driven away. I take it pretty seriously. Sanctity of off-blog, etc. There are rules.
Given the openness of internet communication these days, doesn't it make sense to be quite clear to people about these things? It's not a substitute for discretion, obviously.
4: I had the same experience at NYT yesterday. Using FF and flash block and ad block I normally don't see that crap. I was not happy. I yanked the Ethernet plug immediately and went into damage control mode.
Note to ReadersThanks NYT! Now you tell me.
Published: September 13, 2009
Some NYTimes.com readers have seen a pop-up box warning them about a virus and directing them to a site that claims to offer antivirus software. We believe this was generated by an unauthorized advertisement and are working to prevent the problem from recurring. If you see such a warning, we suggest that you not click on it. Instead, quit and restart your Web browser. Questions and comments can be sent to adtraffic@nytimes.com.
max
['Ah, well, never hurts to clean up.']
re: 46
The point I was making above was that many of those lists that one believed to be private and subscription only are no longer so. Their archives are increasingly indexed and public, and, in some cases, quasi-surreptitious technology is being used to make other once-private forums public.
For example, some friends of mine run a chat server, which is used by several different music related groups. They found that bots were logging in, and relaying the topics to a public server, which was indexing them for public search. As it happens that public server is now defunct, but this sort of thing happens.
49: Private means private, etc., and I will hunt you down if you don't get that, or you will be driven away. I take it pretty seriously. Sanctity of off-blog, etc. There are rules.
Heh. I'm a good boy! I used to know LB's last name, but somehow mysteriously forgot it. (Seriously - I just filed it as 'something to be forgotten' and voila!)
max
['Disgustingly, no one else does this.']
51: Okay, and thanks. I'm duly warned. I've been aware of the purchase/takeover of usenet by DejaNews (and now Google Groups) for some time, not that I ever said much on usenet. Still, yes.
It sort of sucks, doesn't it? We used to have some fun. Didn't Max say that upthread?
There was an incident over on a sociology blog a couple of years ago when a talk was blogged without it being clear if it was bloggable. See here, partway through the comments.
When I worked at a litigation support company about a decade ago, we were assigned to build a database for a case that included email as evidence. Except we weren't given that evidence electronically. I had the lucky experience of being the one to get the box with the printouts, which meant entering, among other things, about 80+ names off the headers into the database entry program on a dummy terminal. It wasn't really that bad, relative to the rest of the work for that job, but it felt pretty absurd.
38, 39, 44: All of these options sound marvelous, and y'all are making me hungry. I've had a diet coke.
'Disgustingly, no one else does this.'
I do. Why hold on to people's real names? I remember those I know, but I guess I have a really bad memory otherwise.
56: You left off my breakfast.
61: Which is a pity because I have a weakness for marshmallow cereals. But I eat them for clandestine desserts. (My mother wouldn't let me have them when I was growing up, thus ensuring a secretive love for them in the future. So even though I said 59 in jest parsimon really does remind me of my mom - which is a good thing, promise.)
parsimon really does remind me of my mom
You and I are close enough to a generation apart.
I have left my house and am terrified that I left my stovetop on. I will report if I get home and everyone in my building is dead.
That would be a terrible way to start your thirties.
I think this panic attack is actually work-related, but the manifestation is pretty awful.
The sociology blog exchange linked in 54 is interesting and good.
If you're participating in a private subscription-only email list, you ought to be (made) aware that the contents thereon are private.
If you're participating in a private subscription-only email list, you ought to be (made) aware that the odds are that the supposedly private contents thereon will eventually be made public, especially the juiciest such contents, and believing otherwise is setting yourself up for trouble.
The only exception I can think of is if the list is tight enough that you personally know and can trust everyone on it, and even then, relationships change.
See the recent Klein-Greenwald flap.
Nutritious bowl of Optimum Slim™ cereal with some dried cranberries on top, with soymilk, by the way.
the odds are that the supposedly private contents thereon will eventually be made public
Which is why I hardly ever say anything interesting anywhere any more. As I said, it's a bummer, but it's the way things are.
67
The sociology blog exchange linked in 54 is interesting and good.
I agree the discussion is interesting. I would come down on the default bloggable side. I find the academic impulse to try to limit discussion to members of the guild annoying.
71
Which is why I hardly ever say anything interesting anywhere any more. As I said, it's a bummer, but it's the way things are.
I don't see why things can't be interesting without being indiscreet.
73: Yes, I know. But one wishes to remain under the radar. I'm not talking about indiscretion as much as sheer outspokenness. It turns out that keeping your own counsel seems best.
64: If it is any comfort, I have actually done this (not merely panicked about the possibility) and nothing bad happened. Well, nothing bad other than me feeling sheepish and dumb.
re: 74
Yes, and it's hard to know what is going to attract people's attentions and/or scorn/disapproval. The US and the UK both have their moments where perfectly sane points of view can become anathema. I've been online in some form or other since I was 16, and in some form or other much of that material is (in theory) accessible. While I've not written anything, I think, that I'd be actively ashamed of* -- no secret past as a Randian, no meticulously catalogued collection of anime-porn, or whatever -- I don't doubt that there's at least something out there that could annoy someone of a sufficiently conservative religious or political bent.
* my political and ethical views have been boringly stable over time.
57: I remember those I know, but I guess I have a really bad memory otherwise.
I have a good memory (excepting, apparently here, during the winter. I'm a plant. Who knew?), but I read long ago that everything would be a in a computer somewhere. So I worked hard to respect people's privacy, and also to keep fairly mum about most things. I'd be in s'ttaM position if I hadn't started early. As it turns out, that wasn't even good enough. How annoying.
Also, AWB: I totally suck and did not wish you a happy birthday the day beforehand as I intended, and I kept goofily procrastinating. So happy belated birthday!
max
['And I almost forgot to hit post. Jeez.']
The Van Jones kerfuffle has been interesting to me, as someone who's indulged in both intemperate, radical public speaking and governmental service.
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It's tempting to assume Obama negotiated himself into a corner in which little actual reform was possible and is left with a modest expansion of the existing system and slowly-phased in reforms, all of which will still pass because, we're told, it would be "obscene" to vote against it.Sorry for long quotage, but I'm reasonably sure now that's what happened/is happening.
But suppose "fixing" the system was never the goal? Suppose you're Pete Peterson, and you've spent your career trying to slash America's "entitlement" programs, and you figured out a way to make drastic cuts in Medicare under the guise of "health care reform."In that hypothetical, your major goal would be to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the Medicare payment system, and then build in a politically shielded mechanism to extract hundreds of billions more if the initial cuts didn't sufficiently reduce Medicare's hit on the budget.
You'd have to package this carefully, because if you simply announced you wanted to slash Medicare by perhaps a trillion dollars or more over the next decade or so, you'd get slaughtered by AARP and earn the wrath of liberal Democrats and particularly seniors, the majority of whom tend to vote Democratic, or at least they used to.
So you'd talk about eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" in the system. Few would believe there's much hope in that, so you'd add the idea of changing the provider payment incentives to get equal or better care by changing how providers practice medicine. You'd talk about "bending the cost curve" and warn folks that unless we did something dramatic, the Medicare deficits would overwhelm the federal budget and dominate the GDP.
It would be useful to have bipartisan cover for the risks of incurring seniors' wrath, but since the Republicans would be unlikely to participate openly in such a scheme and would rather use it to scare seniors, you probably couldn't count of them. So you'd settle for a small, manageable "bipartisan" group you could more easily control and which would provide at least temporary cover while you put the package together.
Of course, the core of the Democratic Party would never stand for doing this in lieu of pursuing universal coverage, let alone doing it alone and accepting the risks. But you might be able to convince them you were trying to enact broader "health care reform" and then slip the Medicare package inside the broader effort.That would get the Democrats, including the reform-minded progressives, fully engaged in the details of "reform" while continuing to move the main Medicare piece through the more controlled "gang of six."[...]
So there it is: the Pete Petersons would get drastic trillion dollar cuts in Medicare, while Democrats tried to hide from seniors the fact they've been asked to risk benefit cuts to fund a questionable expansion of coverage which, after all, was only a cover for hacking Medicare. It's a neat trick.
And all that stuff about the "public health insurance option" and co-ops and/or triggers? Nice diversion, but gosh, we just don't have the votes in the Senate. All of this was done in plain sight. This was never multidimensional chess. It was just the simple card game of gin. You just had to look at the cards in a different way.
max
['Sorry, guys.']
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6:
I have a similar thing going on at work, where it was incredibly easy to figure out a coworker was a pseudonymous blogger, by this person's stock anecdotes and background. Our field is quite small (even though it's pretty big), so it's not hard to figure out who's who.
What was most shocking, of course, when this person started blogging about ME. It's pretty interesting to see what others have to say about you in what they think is a more-or-less private venue that's clearly not.
Haven't said anything, but am trying not to think about it. It was awfully tempting after I found out the first time to leave a note on their desk saying "STOP LYING ABOUT ME ONLINE". Of course, I didn't. Sigh.
This is a time for passive-aggressive blog commenting, if their blog has comments. Start commenting, and gradually drop data making it clear that you know exactly who they are.
Make 'em sweat a little. (Only, of course, if they are saying bad things about you that aren't true.)
I'm on a mailing list with someone I know from a hobby that I have (ahem). I've never posted to the list, so I don't think he's aware. Luckily he's never mentioned me by name, but he does give the impression he knows rather more about [the hobby] than he really does.
Ttam, I had no idea you were a furry.
My mom recently told me she reads my personal blog. I was simultaneously shocked ("But how did she find it?!") and unconcerned ("It's almost painfully innocuous if and when anyone bothers to post something there; whatever"). Still, it was a bit startling.
Hah. I'm really a stoat, in a man's body.
I'm really a stoat
Oh, this befudded and vexed me so much as a child. I think it was Danny the Champion of the World, or at any rate one of the Roald Dahl books. I spent so long trying to figure out what in the name of heaven they were talking about. I knew it had to be an animal that lived in the woods, but beyond that there was no deducing.
On the topic at hand, I've been spouting off online since I was 15 or so, but I'm hard pressed to think there's online material of mine that I wouldn't be willing to stand by in public, even if (as ttaM says) there is inevitably some portion of the public that would be infuriated by it. Some of it more egotistical and imperious than I'd like, for sure, but in general where I've made people mad or offended them I think I've done it on purpose.
Maybe it's just that I've never actually trusted that any of this stuff is private. I can remember moralistically chastising someone circa 1998 not to write anything in e-mail that they wouldn't be willing to see on a billboard on I-95 or the front page of the New York Times.
The only exception I can think of is if the list is tight enough that you personally know and can trust everyone on it, and even then, relationships change, and people's angry exes can get access to their computer, and people are idiots about storing their passwords in plain sight, and people take their computers in for repair where service techs are bored and mischievous....
And on the link in 54: it is interesting; it is rather astonishing to see that the discussion took place as late as 2007; and, uh, I agree with Shearer.
not to write anything in e-mail that they wouldn't be willing to see on a billboard on I-95
In email???
Good grief. I refuse to give up the belief that I can trust at least some people.
In email. Yes.
My boss (twice removed) asked for a written assessment of a contentious situation and the positions of the people involved. I wrote an honest assessment and sent it to him. He then sent it to the person I'd criticized the most. That person is also quite powerful. Boy, that was fun. It taught me to give such briefings face to face.
87: I tend to think this way, too, but inevitably the day comes when I find myself wishing I hadn't put that in writing...
Eh, 'trust' -- you've never forwarded an email to someone else who would be interested? Copying the original sender, but just including a new person in the conversation?
This isn't so much about the internet, as it is about written communication. Once you've written something and given it to another person, it's out of your hands. You can ask them to keep it secret, but you can't make them keep it secret. If you don't want someone to be able to pass something along, you keep it oral.
84: Such possibilities make me seriously question the blogging impulse. I am probably a bit overconfident in believing no one I know offline would ever stumble over there...
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79:Well, I thinked I linked the Scarecrow FDL post in the thread below, but Richard Estes was so succinct that I will link to him. And quote the whole thing in confidence that he won't mind.
One of those posts that we will remember 5 years from now, and recall how we were rendered helpless by the expropriation of the progressive politics of identity in order to further dismantle the social welfare state....RE
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If you don't want someone to be able to pass something along, you keep it oral.
I will refrain from the obvious herpes joke because this is the Internet and someone might see.
you've never forwarded an email to someone else who would be interested? Copying the original sender, but just including a new person in the conversation?
Only with the original sender's advance permission, of course; and actually only very rarely, on quite dry and boring matters (e.g. legal stuff pertaining to my mom's estate, database design, the discussion list I co-moderate which I think is dead now). Otherwise 99.9% of email is private between two parties.
It should be noted that I don't work in an office environment in which I'm called upon to exchange professional correspondence with coworkers or supervisors or supervisees. So it doesn't come up in that context, and I'd surely be very careful then, I'd hope, given all the cautions voiced here.
In any case, I was thinking of personal email correspondence. I'd have to return to handwritten letters if I worried about what was said between me and personal friends showing up on a billboard!
Even then. It's less likely, but it's still an available possibility.
It goes both ways: I'm actually more willing to put personal stuff online than I was 20 years ago, because I have more confidence and willingness to deal with the fallout of it becoming public. Conversly, I'm less willing to put information about other people out there, because I've seen how absolutely devastating it can be.
The real challenge is helping the under-25 generation understand the wildly assymetrical consequences. There's quite a gap between "My boss saw a drunk picture of me when I was supposed to be working, and I'm fired," and "Something I said disclosed a person's health condition or sexual orientation and they became homeless because of it."
At work I'm in charge of petrifying the new staff enough that they understand the potentially life or death consequences of sharing some kinds of information. The American-born and middle/UMC ones seem to have a harder time with it than poor/working class people or those raised abroad. It's probably easier to imagine how information can be used against someone if you grew up seeing happen.
I refuse to give up the belief that I can trust at least some people.
It's much less the people than the medium and its associated logistics. One can write things in snail mail and have vastly more confidence that it will be read by only the intended recipient and potentially those who share a household with them; I suppose it's possible that a really angry person could scan and upload a handwritten letter but it's not a risk I worry about.
I'm not really sure what's intended by the reverse text in 93, but I didn't post it. It is reminding me that as a child I knew a simple substitution code so well that I really could read it nearly as easily as English. Works just fine if you're trying to deter casual snooping.
96: LB, all I can say is that my life would be impoverished by declining to share myself in personal email correspondence. That said, I say less than I would like sometimes, and it makes me sad.
In general, I'm not willing to be so risk-averse. It's a bit bizarre to me that people are, overall, pulling back from intimacy (in personal email) out of a fear that their correspondent might turn on them. Hm. Really?
99
In general, I'm not willing to be so risk-averse. It's a bit bizarre to me that people are, overall, pulling back from intimacy (in personal email) out of a fear that their correspondent might turn on them. Hm. Really?
It's a matter of degree. Email is riskier than personal conversations because it tends to be more permanent (like snail mail). As with everything in life you have to balance risk and reward.
Small towns were hell. People fled to the cold and anonymous city even at the cost of giving up their family.
Professionally, I find that praise is written and criticism is spoken, always. IMO, growing up in a warm and trusting environment is a huge liability, and I agree with The American-born and middle/UMC ones seem to have a harder time with it than poor/working class people or those raised abroad.
The other relevant experience besides class is bitter family strife.
Let us all join in mutual suspicion, for lo, it is the cosmopolitan way.
Heh.
77: Thanks, max!
Herbert Hoover's problem reminds me of the time I recently came across a cousin's Twitter page and it was all about his drug habits and weird incest-rapey comments @hissister, who'd respond sort of "ew! ha ha!" They don't really have functional parents, but are in their early 20's. Rapey cousin's Twitter page is under his own full name, so it's not like it's a secret, I guess, though his last name is a lot more common than mine.
weird incest-rapey comments @hissister, who'd respond sort of "ew! ha ha!"
Um, wow. Hard to know what to say to that.
90: Eh, 'trust' -- you've never forwarded an email to someone else who would be interested? Copying the original sender, but just including a new person in the conversation?
I've forwarded non-personal emails very occasionally. I never forward regular personal emails. If I have to report someone's doings I describe it in reduced and edited form myself. Several times here, I have mentioned ex-person, but if you asked me to my face I'd say the same thing, but I would not repeat any details or anything like that. It's all genercized, as untracable as that sort of thing can be and concerns me. Same, but more so, with other friends.
I know a crazy person from online who more or less stalked me for some years. After the ugly flamewar that finally ensued, she retreated off to her blog, where she publically broadcasts her insanity on a near-daily. I ain't sayin' nothing. I know personal shit about her from emails; I ain't sayin' nothin'. I don't have the emails anymore because I thought etiquette required I nuke them. Can't prove anything. Oh, well. The only stuff you're gonna hear from me is that 'crazy people will sometime accuse you of being a member of a crypto-nazi quasi-OTO cult - that's how you know they're crazy'.
So forwarding personal emails is RIGHT OUT.
max
['Of course, the real reason to be paranoid that the Feds are (still) busy capturing every email sent.']
AWB, you're also a Virgo? I think I vaguely knew that. (I don't believe in astrology or anything like that, of course not of course not, but fellow Virgoes are, well, fellows.)
Virgoes are, well, fellows persnickety! It's how we roll!
107: I can accept that. Otherwise we'd have to say how we feel about our birthstone: you like that color, that pale green? BORING.
Though I've just googled Virgo birthstone and it turns out the pale green whose name I don't recall goes completely unmentioned. There's something fishy going on here.
I can certainly work with these.
||
"People who died" now includes Jim Carroll.
|>
109: Damn. I'm surprised to learn that he was 60.
60 is too young for Jim Carroll, but he doesn't look good at the end. I'm saddened.
The Basketball Diaries and following was great/disturbing, but I for some reason always remember this (though I'd slightly misremembered the wording):
Sure
I got a syringe
I use it to baste my tiny turkey
I would forward personal e-mails up the trust hierarchy, but not down. I'd forward anything to Jammies, plenty to my best friend, some to my parents, etc.
I always confuse The Basketball Diaries and Hoops, because they came out the same year and Hoops seems like it should have been called The Basketball Diaries, and I have no idea why The Basketball Diaries was called that.
Oh! I mean Hoop Dreams. The documentary about the two really good high school basketball players.
Virgoes are, well, persnickety! It's how we roll!
Heh, indeed.
Hoops, the documentary about two aspiring gay porn stars, was also very good.
I often confuse that with the Basketball Diaries. I blame Leonardo DiCaprio.
I think those two with He Got Game complete a neat little basketball movie trifecta for the mid/late-90s (of course Diaries only being tangentially about basketball). They three all have some great moments and hold together well overall.
Why hold on to people's real names?
If you could explain to me how not to, I'd be grateful. Telling myself that I need to forget that Ivan Alias is really John Doe merely fixes the awareness more firmly in my mind.
86: Oh, this befudded and vexed me so much as a child. I think it was Danny the Champion of the World, or at any rate one of the Roald Dahl books. I spent so long trying to figure out what in the name of heaven they were talking about. I knew it had to be an animal that lived in the woods, but beyond that there was no deducing.
It's simple. Weasels are weaselly recognised and stoats are stoatally different.
he doesn't look good at the end
No, he sure didn't.
118: White Men Can't Jump doesn't get a spot?
Racist.
Wow, I always thought Jim Carroll was dead.
119: It helps if you don't think of an elephant.
122 is uncanny. I almost posted that exact comment last night, but then thought, eh, it's late. Do I at least get credited with an assist?
When I first read 109 my mind thought "Jim Carey" and I had a confusing range of emotions.
Also, I never really liked that "People Who Died" song very much. For some reason it was on the People's Centrally Coordinated Bar and Nightclub Soundtrack so I heard it at least several times a week in Shanghai between 1995 and 2000.
my mind thought "Jim Carey" and I had a confusing range of emotions.
which I assume manifested in exaggerated grimaces on your face.
119: Telling myself that I need to forget that Ivan Alias is really John Doe merely fixes the awareness more firmly in my mind.
When you start to think about someone's name, just decide to think about AWB instead!
{rimshot}
116: Hoops, the documentary about two aspiring gay porn stars, was also very good.
122: 118: White Men Can't Jump doesn't get a spot?
I'm sure, in fact, utterly certain without ever having seen any actual evidence in support of the idea, that there is a porn movie called White Men Can't Hump.
max
['Things you just knwo.']
What's your bet on Poop Dreams?
129: Not only is there a movie, there is also the most powerful book on RACE and SEX ever written, period.
Or Slight Men Can't Dump, a riveting tale of a randy group of featherweights, plagued with constipation due to a cheese-heavy diet.
The latter is a URL fail, though, because I keep reading it as White Men Can Thump.
Bright Men Shan't Bump, a cautionary tale of Ivy Leaguers battling profligate drug use.
Wow. I had completely forgotten that somebody had already posted here on this very topic. I wonder what ever happened to him?
Bright Men Shan't Bump
I thought it was just praising the wisdom of Joe Tex.
135: I had completely forgotten that somebody had already posted here on this very topic. I wonder what ever happened to him?
I didn't remember the post upon reading it (I usually do), but maybe that was why I thought of it. Either that or great minds think alike!
130: What's your bet on Poop Dreams?
Yes, yes, oh yes!
max
['Rambone!']
I didn't remember the post upon reading it
I only vaguely remember writing it. Dementia appears to be settling in.
I love how the author adds ". . . As Well As Black Men".
I thought of this post all day today while desperate to tell you all about the most INCREDIBLE faculty meeting of ALL TIME, which I attended this morning. But I cannot. I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. It was a full hour and a half of ZOMG.
Love & Basketball was very good.
I agree, with some caveats. But, I have to add, one of my favorite things in the entire movie was the soundtrack choice of "Love and Happiness" over the opening shot of them moving to the suburbs. One of the most effective uses of music to set a mood that I can remember in a movie.
For me it perfectly captured that feeling of being worn out, but happy to be on the road.
At least give us a hint! Was it good ZOMG or bad ZOMG?
True ZOMG transcends "good" and "bad".
It was both! There was an incredibly inspiring hour-long speech, responded to with universal boisterous applause at the end of nearly every sentence, followed by a response that was an accusation of the most serious and personal kind, which divided the previously united audience into angry factions! It was totally awesome, from a spectator-value standpoint.
144: That's why the author of Beyond Good and Bad also wrote Thus Spoke ZOMGathustra.
145: So basically an Unfogged comment thread made flesh.
Did it end with a near-unanimous decision that blogging should be a firing offense, which avoided becoming the faculty's official policy only because the key decision-makers were convinced that nobody would ever actually start a blog so it would be a waste of time to discuss the issue at atll?
148: Not exactly. God, I wish true and eternal anonymity were ever really real.
149: Just write up a full account and have Nosflow post it with the cock pictures.
Post the full story anonymously in the comments to a different, entirely unconnected blog, and email tips on where to find it to the people you know? If you trust them, that's pretty anonymous.
Still wouldn't work. All the best details about the story are totally identifying. Both the colleges I work at now are pretty much one of a kind, which is really cool from an interesting-work standpoint, but not great for internet sharing. Alas!
Somewhere, a sports blog gets some really, really confusing spam.
152: L/iber/ty Uni/versity and Dee/p Sp/rings must be a hell of a commute.
"I suppose it's possible that a really angry person could scan and upload a handwritten letter but it's not a risk I worry about."
Cellphone, 5 megapixels, flickr, done...
155: But what I want to know is what you're so angry about, clew.
Ha. The set of persons contains the set of angry persons; nerd out.
Obligatory reference: Erving Goffman and the concept of onstage/offstage and the management of identity
Is my observation incorrect, or are the people who comment here under apparently real names all older guys who figure they've got nothing to lose, and/or have more integrated identities?
158.1: Appreciated.
158.2: Yes. Plus, I would add, "who are unlikely to be creepily stalked based on a feminine-sounding name."
There was a younger guy using his real name, but he reversed himself.
unlikely to be creepily stalked based on a feminine-sounding name
Good point. Sometimes I forget that there are people who risk monsters that come from others' ids. I don't think about the problem of violence against women much any more. Perhaps I've just put it into the category of More Evidence That The World Is Going To Hell Despite Our Highest Hopes, along side the myriad Things I Had Hoped To Help Find Ways To Help But Which Have Defeated Me.