Blog burns
Archived from August 11, 2005
I've gotten burned from a few of my blog entries now. I use my real name, which is not perhaps the best idea. I'm very frank and occasionally bitter in my writing. Some people go for this; other people look for ways to criticize.
In the few cases where readers took issue, sometimes they were looking to be offended, other times I wasn't as sensitive as I could've been.
Most recently I got burned by some girl responding to my Vidal Sassoon entry. That was a clear case of her choosing to be offended. Still, she basically said the hair equivalent of "you'll never work in this town again."
That really opened my eyes.
Up until then, I fool heartedly assumed that the only people reading my blog were my friends or anonymous strangers in Portland who have a good sense of humor.
That is the audience I tailor my entries to. People who know me, but don't know much about my life in LA. I don't use names, but a dedicated person could figure out who I'm referring to in an entry.
I believe details are funny and interesting, but on this occasion my entry came up pretty quickly in a Google search and some random broad went to my entry and read what she wanted to into my words. It turns out my specificity has bit me in the ass.
My shrink and I have talked about the issue of personal blog entries a few times. I didn't really grasp the scope and potential viewership blogs can have, nor how condemning they can be.
I never intended that people in LA other than a very few close friends would ever read this. I guess that was pretty naive of me.
I thought about what to do:
-stop blogging
-write under a pseudonym
-censor myself
-nothing, continue as before.
I've given it a lot of thought. I thought about kindness and journalistic integrity. I thought about why I started writing a blog. I thought about what good it does for me.
I write this blog for myself; to vent and to update my friends. I use it as a place to air my issues and work on my writing. After leading a relatively private life, it is cathartic for me to get things "out in the open." There are stories in my life that I think are hilarious, but which put others in an uncomfortable place.
Because of that, from now on, if I am going to lambaste someone (like "nice guys") I plan to do it under the veil of fiction.
Additionally, this space seems to be a great venue for other works of a less personal nature; stories, bits, sketches etc.
I don't know when I got so mean, but as I reviewed some of my entries, I see that I would feel embarrassed and/or guilty if certain people read them. That's not the best situation to be in.
So, this is the dawn of the new, less-personal blog.
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