Forgive me for this.
Although the Benchly’sWord Vault to the left will tell you otherwise, my most devoted readers (read: reader) will confirm that these are the opening words to my fourteenth blog entry of 2009. My last entry, a brief photo-essay documenting a recent trip to a local farm to pick strawberries was removed in an effort to preserve the anonymity of my girlfriend. I removed this entry after receiving a hostile comment posted by an anonymous poster (it’s funny how all hostile comments are anonymous) in which my girlfriend’s full name was used. The anonymous poster wondered if someone should warn my girlfriend of my past, which was ironic because my girlfriend is someone I can open up to about my past and also because some days it feels as though she and I are the only ones capable of living in the present. As a result, I’m forced to screen all comments and, though it makes my First-Amendment-bones quiver as if George W. Bush was in the room, all comments containing personal attacks, personal information, and/or foul language are now deleted. Who knew it would come to this?
One question I’m repeatedly asked is, “what’s up with your nickname?” (or some variation). In response, like a ballplayer reciting the daily, monotonous postgame “there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’” sound bite, I explain the origins of the nickname, delving into as much detail as my mood and schedule will allow. Despite my predilection for long-windedness, though, one detail that is often lost in my explanation is the reasoning behind my use of the nickname as a pseudonym on the Internet. I don’t bother elucidating because I consider the explanation to be implied. The short answer is that I prefer anonymity; of course, when have you ever known me to be short?
When I started this blog, the second entry I published was a rant about a man whom I dubbed The Prick. I kept my real name and his out of the blog for the same reason: in case he ever read it. Even then, I recognized that anonymity was my only chance to feel free to express my uncensored thoughts, which was my only chance at producing anything worth reading. (Whether or not my writing is actually worth reading is a discussion for another day.) I wanted to be uncensored without risk of hurt feelings. What an unrealistic contradiction, right? I guess that’s the fate of a writer. From the very start when Professor Hudnall and others were teaching us the art of storytelling, we were told to write what we know. And then we graduated and entered a world where successful writers based some or most of their stories on their personal experiences, all the while pretending that any similarities between real life and the fiction presented in their work was a coincidence. The writer for the motion picture (500) Days of Summer even makes light of this when he prefaces his film with the disclaimer, “The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you, Jenny Beckman.”
Regardless of how hopeless my goal of anonymity seemed to be, I had to try. I wanted my writing to speak for itself, not the facts and feelings behind the words. (And incidentally, to anyone who complains that I’m only telling one side of my life’s story, I say of course I am, and if you have a problem with that, get your own damn blog.) My writing is important to me and as such, this blog is doubly important. The birth of this blog came at a time when, as a writer, I worried that my creativity had died like a fly ball at the warning track on a windy day at Candlestick Park, and now, five years later, Candlestick Park has been torn down and replaced by a new literation-friendly ballpark. I built it and my blog counter tells me that people have come, so I must be doing something right. There’s just one tiny problem …
As the Peer Pressure links to the left will tell you, like 200 million people around the world, I have a Facebook page. I created a page for the same reason some people buy an Oprah book; or like a certain band; or wear a certain style; or say a certain catchphrase: I followed the masses. And though I’m sure that once the American sheep herd starts to venture to a different networking hill, “Facebook” will be said with the same nostalgic-yet-disapproving tone as has been reserved for “Hootie and the Blowfish” and “skidz” (among other unpopular fads formerly known as popular), I will acknowledge that it has worked wonders in reconnecting me with lost friends, cultivating current friendships, and establishing new ones. Unfortunately, it has also introduced a new level of anonymity-related problems.
When I signed up for Facebook, I used my pseudonym. I did this because I knew my blog would be linked to my Facebook page and vice versa, and in order to preserve my anonymity and subsequently maintain a freedom to write in my blog, I needed to keep my name private on Facebook. I also set my Facebook profile settings as private as one can get without being unwelcoming to friends both old and new: stated simply, for a person to see anything other than my pseudonym and profile picture, he/she would have to be my Facebook friend. I’ve even gone so far as to use the pseudonyms for my nieces in the pictures of them that I’ve posted on Facebook. Sure, that’s a picture of me with Niece #3, but unless you know her, you don’t know her name or where she lives. I’ve done my best to create an online identity as close to the real one as is possible when using millions of ones and zeros. This has included dropping Facebook “friends” with whom I no longer maintain contact (including exes, former coworkers, etc.). And as a result, for the last Facebook year, my sense of privacy has begotten a sense of creative freedom. And yet.
A month ago, the anonymous poster left the aforementioned comment that included my girlfriend’s full name, a piece of information to which, in my perfect world, only my Facebook “friends” would have had access. I admit that there are loopholes through which an obsessive person could travel to ultimately find her way to private information reserved for my Facebook friends. It would be grossly naïve to think otherwise. And I admit that even though I’ve since taken additional steps to ensure my online privacy, there is probably a backdoor I’m missing through which someone may someday enter. This is the world we live in.
And I won’t forgive you for that.
Benchly'sword 