Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Tale of Miss A. Nonny Mouse

When I was younger my parents bought me a book of poems written by A. Nonny Mouse. It seems that Miss Mouse (who was an actual mouse of course!) had written a large number of poems. But somehow throughout time people stopped crediting her for the work and instead said the poems were written by someone called anonymous. And poor A. Nonny Mouse faded off in obscurity.

But speaking of Miss A. Nonny Mouse, lets talk about anonymity in the blogosphere. First there's some bloggers who we're on a full name basis with. So much so that I could give you their name and most of you know automatically what blogs I'm talking about. Need some proof? Anyone know who Heather Armstrong is? Or Ree Drummond? Or even Kelly Stamps?

Then there's other who make an attempt to stay completely anonymous. They go by an alter ego. They avoid posting any personal pictures. They make a point to avoid posting any identifiable facts.

But in general most bloggers, as well as myself, tend to fall somewhere in between the two. For example, you all know at least part of my name, but I've made a point not to reveal the whole thing. I do try to refer to the boy as "the boy," but I'm sure if you've been paying enough attention there's some of you who know what his name is. Although at times I think maybe it would have been slightly smarter to be slightly more anonymous from the start. After all, it might have been from to come up with an alter ego!

Its funny to think that 15 or so years ago no one had to worry about how much to reveal online, because it didn't really exist. It makes you wonder if 15 years from now we'll stop worrying again, but only because everything will already be online?

If your a blogger, what level of anonymity do you feel comfortable with? Have you ever felt a need to change it? And for fun, do you have any favorite poems written by A. Nonny Mouse?

~Shoshanah

6 comments:

  1. Good question. I don't post my last name and I'm careful about saying when I'm leaving town. For example, I'll say I'm going to NYC but I never say exactly when. I'm surprised when people post all their info.

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  2. This is a good topic... I'm somewhere in between the two. I don't think I would come completely out in the open unless my blog was very popular and it was my source of income a la Heather Armstrong, Holly Blecker or any of the other amazingly successful bloggers. It would take too much effort to be completely ann. though I've thought about doing it because I'm terrified people from IRL will find my blog and be all "YOU WROTE WHAT ABOUT ME?!"

    Yeah... So somewhere between the two extremes?

    :-)

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  3. I go back and forth about this ALL THE TIME. Right now I'm in a "who cares?" phase and am posting pictures and using my name. But I did run into a problem with an IRL friend who read a comment that I wrote that they didn't like very much. To me, the comment wasn't that big of a deal and was just me being honest, but from now on I make sure that my IRL friends do not have starring roles in my blog. I may mention them, but I do not talk about them because of this.

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  4. I'm not anonymous at all. A LOT of my family and friends read my blog (I find out about more people who read it every day, haha) and I use my full name fairly often. If you google my name my blog is one of the first 6 or 7 things to come up.

    Are there days that I wish I was anonymous? Sure. But, for the most part I'm happy I'm not. I do hold back on some aspects on my blog but I really don't think I hold back that much. The way I am on my blog is very much the way I am in real life so if people that I know IRL don't like that then they shouldn't read!

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  5. I totally debate this too. I post pictures of myself because I know that some of my IRL friends read my blog but I only use my initials and try to keep it vague where I go to school (although I'm sure if you read carefully enough you probably could figure it out!)

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  6. Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

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