As a general rule, I don't use people's real names on this blog. In the case of fellow bloggers, I want to respect the anonymity of their blog persona. In the case of friends and family who read my blog, I simply assume that they don't want to be connected to me in any sort of public way--perhaps a paranoid assumption, but a safer assumption than its inverse. In the case of people who don't read my blog, I don't want them to come here after Googling their name and wonder why this freaky dude is writing about them on the internet.
I made an exception when writing about the girl I liked in kindergarten, ostensibly because I couldn't imagine her being weirded out by the fact that some childhood friend had a childhood crush on her. Really it was because I could not imagine that anyone I haven't seen in twenty years still exists. And if she did exist, somewhere in the nether regions of the universe, surely she was still five years old. In the last few weeks, though, I've noticed two visitors coming here from a Google search for her name.
Despite the lack of any logical reason, this bothers me.
I distinctly remember her. I thought she was such a cute little girl for you.
ReplyDeleteI do find it creepy when I find my name spread about. There are things said I said out there I’m near certain I never said. Pictures posted by organizations I never knew about, and to whom I certainly never gave my okay. It does feel unnerving. But I think I’d be flattered by having been listed under “all the boys I’ve loved before” in a blog; and I’d feel particularly safe about it if the author was a lesbian :-).
ReplyDeleteI found pictures of my childhood (which I haven't even got) spread on the net.....
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