Thinking Aloud

One thing that happens when you start using some of these new fun websites, facebook, twitter, identi.ca etc. Is that you really do end up mixing friends, from all kinds of different places. In my case I’ve got friends, from university, high school, church, work, Hardwicke Island, Victoria Social Media Club plus my parents, inlaws and pretty much everyone having the ability to look in on my status updates, new pictures, etc. It really cuts across groups that are generally held separate. In some respects, this is great, and in some respects this is taking some getting used to.

Are you all listening?

The great part of this is that everyone who is interested in what I’m doing has the opportunity to keep up with my latest thoughts and latest happenings. The bit that takes some getting used to is that, being a fairly private person, I would tend not to tell my high school friends what the latest up on Hardwicke Island is, and vice versa. It makes it a bit easy to get stuck not letting anyone know what’s up since the messages aren’t really targeted. There’s things that are obviously inappropriate, and these days it seems no election campaign will now be complete without some facebook/youtube-reveals-your-past news. Not that I’m planning to run for office any day soon…

So, it seems that there’s a few ways forward. Set up separate accounts for different people to tune into – This seems crazy, do I need more usernames and passwords… Surely not. Or the second, just get used to the fact that the world is going to know a little more about my life than they could before, and let the benefits of sharing outweigh any detriments that might occur. So, does this really all come down to “sharing is good?”

There’s a little more than that… somewhere along the lines, the idea that avoiding talking about religion, politics and money seems to have seeped into my thinking, I’m not the only one. But if you read that article you can see that things are changing. And that’s where the simplicity comes in.

Just Be Yourself, Ok?

With all the social media slashing holes in our so called anonymity, everyone gets some choices. If anonymity and integrity are important, you really can’t play. That’s the only way, just keep reading the webpages like back in 2001, don’t comment, don’t post, don’t tweet, don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t get involved. If anonymity is important but integrity is not, then you could always just fake it and be who you want online, and be someone else off line. But just like in really life, being different people in different places, means remembering your character when you step into a certain situation, and it is very awkward when those people from different situation collide, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Integrity Sans Anonymity

The last choice is if integrity is important and anonymity isn’t or at least is sacrifice-able. Then you just speak into every situation as yourself. The downfall here is that everybody get’s to see what you’re thinking; what you’re about. And it may be very different from what they expected. It offers people the opportunity to be involved in what you really are thinking. It definitely exposes a lot more territory for discussion, but I think the benefits of this way outweigh the detriments.