SAY WHAT?

As I considered creating a blog and writing entries on a regular basis, I was suddenly faced with the prickly new phenomenon of blog etiquette which seems to be alarmingly subjective as I puruse one blog after another...all in the name of research, you know.  I've talked about this with fellow bloggers and friends who would most likely be named and/or appear in my blog. 

It's really a fascinating topic, since good taste, discretion, personal disclosure, and naming names and revealing one's secrets -- and others, with or without their consent -- seem to be highly variable these days.  Besides not wanting to be hit with a libel suit, I don't want to tick off some wide-eyed psychotic/online blind date who might take offense and a hammer to me if I ID'd him when recounting our conversation when he said within the first five minutes, "Do you know I have a theory that serial killers don't find their victims...their victims find their killer because they want to die." 

As Jane Fonda recently said on "The Today Show" when she explained why she didn't want to do a monologue called C***T, "I have enough problems..." 

Blogging creates a unique dynamic.  I attempt to remain somewhat anonymous, and yet I choose to reveal a good deal about myself and my life.  Of course, there is the art of selective disclosure, where it seems the person is revealing all, but, of course, is doling out select portions of one's life.  So the blogger decides what is within the parameters of what will be open season to write, and what is kept private.  On the other hand, when a blogger writes about friends in his universe, even if they aren't openly identified, they, oftentimes, know each other.  So just because I only ID my best galpal friend as "CB," her friend, "GW" knows her, and will thus know it's HER when I write about her.  And vice versa...and that holds true for anyone I write about who knows each other.  I blow their cover by default.  And then there's the issue: What is fair game in what they tell me about their lives and what I can write about?   

A sub-topic:  Who the blogger invites to read his blog...does the writer tell all of his/her friends -- or some, or only a select few?  And what about co-workers, colleagues, relatives, former schoolmates, ex-dates or spouses, current flames, old paramours? And what are the reasons behind that selective process?  What if your friends found out some of them were told by you about your blog, and others were not? Ka-boom, friendships.  

For those of us in 12-step fellowships, there is the added layer of not revealing who is a "member" and who is not...and how much can be written about, even in the most general terms, of what might have transpired at a meeting or within a conversation with a fellow 12-stepper.  

Of course, common sense and discretion will hopefully win out, but sometimes what's benign to me is explosive to the other person. C'mon, who doesn't like a good date or, especially, a bad date anecdote?  I gotta million of 'em...I could tell you about three from last week....but I won't...or will I?  If word gets around that I write about my dates and, in a perfect universe, my sex life (if I had one), I'd be a pariah in this town within the space of only three weeks since I arrived. I work fast, but not THAT fast.  

I said to a friend and fellow blogger last night, Blogging is fascinating...it's like holding up a mirror to a keyboard.  Some hold to the wisdom of holding back..others, in this age of desperate stardom and instant fame (talent no longer necessary), it seems more and more people are willing to sacrifice their dignity and self-respect in exchange for a moment of fame or attention....and to what end?  And here I am, blogging...my shrink just bought six more months with that one.