March 27th, 2007
Identity crisis
Except for in my professional capacity, I used to be unknown on the Internet. At forums and in chat (now I am talking back in the days of NewHorizone and before that, Geocities), I was known by pseudonyms.
I bought Tania.co.za just because I didn't want some other Tania to own it. After I got divorced I thought I could maybe use it in the manner in which I used our family Web site when I was married, to occasionally communicate with relatives.
I started blogging because I needed to test the Domino blog template for business purposes anyway, and I could not do this during office hours. Encouraged by the fact that a whole lot of people at BarCamp were blogging, I started "getting into it". Last year I pitched up at a party and when I introduced myself as Tania, and someone said, "Oh, Tania.co.za?"
It was amusing at first, having my surname replaced by a domain name extension, because it made me feel included in a certain subculture. My surname belonged to the real world, and Tania.co.za is my identity in the virtual world.
But it isn't fun anymore. The worlds have converged, and I don't know if I want to live this kind of life. What if I do something majorly stupid and embarrassing one day? People will know about it. People know who I am. I recently read a comment at Stefano Sessa's blog which said that he should get his own domain because it would be a better way of "branding himself". Is that what blogging is about — branding ourselves? Britney Spears is a brand! Good grief, and I wouldn't want her life for anything in the world. As soon as you become a brand, you become the slave to your public identity. You have to live up to people's expectations. Well, that you have to do in normal life anyway, but this is worse: You have to live up to strangers' expectations now.
Fine, if you change your name to Engelbert Humperdinck, you can always still be Arnold George Dorsey when you go home. But I am Tania. Really. I mean in the real world, not just here. And the things which I write are not made up, they are about real people, which means that in order to protect their privacy I must sometimes find roundabout ways of saying what I feel about them. Last night I jokingly said (to another blogger) that the time will soon come when people will say to each other, "So you don't blog? Well, I guess it's safe for us to date then."
Of course, there's a lot to be said for the whole "I don't care what people think" approach, but that depends on what you're actually famous for. Nigel Kennedy doesn't care, I am sure, that some people regard him as a show-off, and shun him. The same things that make them pull up their noses are what gets him audiences elsewhere. If I were a famous humanitarian, being disliked by some people would be a compliment. Everyone who has ever done something really worthwhile was hated passionately and ridiculed at some point. Jesus even got himself crucified. But that's different. It's worth it. Martyrs can afford to be proud. I can't be proud. I am no better than anyone else. I am a hypocrite, and often I even sin knowingly. I don't want so many people to see me. Spiritual heroes can sometimes fall too, but we accept that, because they repent and go on. I am not a spiritual hero.
Of course, I could blog about other things. After all, I started this because I needed to test the whole blogging thing for work, and I have to find the time to get all these business blogs going. There are other things to talk about, less personal things, less egocentric, introspective things. I take note of what's happening in the "world of blogging", because I need to implement that stuff sometime. But for the rest of it... I have begun to wonder why I signed up at Facebook and MyBlogLog and all these different places, or why I check my stats. Is this an ego-trip? If so, there are far better ways of getting reassurance that you're an OK person. Love people. Save people. Make them happy. Live a meaningful life!
There is just too much of me out there now. So if I gave it up, that would be why.
Even putting all this out there feels like going naked in public.
And now Google is going to index me for saying 'naked in public', and I am going to have to pay for the resulting traffic.