#1 son will not let me read his xanga.
There is more to the story than that. He made a xanga, which his siblings and I enjoyed reading quite a bit. When we incautiously told him so, he spitefully deleted it. He then made a new one, and put on it “a stalker thing” which he assures us will tell him if we ever go look at it. We are forbidden to do so.
Now, I do not think that #1 son is arranging drug deals via xanga, or plotting the violent overthrow of our hipster mayor, so I do not intend to invade his privacy by reading his xanga. Naturally, I resent his refusal to allow me to read it, especially since he tells me that he has posted about Mr. Rogers, Sam Cooke, and connotations vs. denotations, but I will respect his unreasonable wishes.
It made me think, though, about the entire question of privacy on a xanga. I don’t know his xanga name, so tracking it down would be an interesting bit of detective work. If I happened upon it by accident, would I recognize it?
Just how personal is a xanga?
I am careful about self-disclosure on mine. Specifically, #2 son has let me know that he would find it deeply embarrassing to have someone at school realize that he is #2 son. He does not EVER want to have someone come up and tell him that they read a cute story about him on the internet. And since his entire school seem to have xangas, I am careful not to mention the name of our town or state, not to post recognizable pictures of the family, and not to use any real names whatsoever (except my hairdresser).
However, if someone were trying, say for a class assignment, to figure it out, they could. I’ve mentioned the region in which I live, I’ve written about our football team, I’ve mentioned drives to cities, with distances and directions. There has been some demographic and historical information now and then. Hercule Poirot could determine where I live.
And I am the only person in town who manages a store like ours — in fact, there is only one such store, and the workers include the family that owns it, a part-time worker, and me.
I’ve also linked to my mother, who is mildly famous and therefore does not bother keeping her blog anonymous, and to my daughter, who is anonymous in her blog but gives plenty of inadvertent clues to her identity.
Were I disseminating state secrets in the guise of a mild-mannered knitting blog, I could definitely be caught.
What about you?
Does your mother read your xanga? Mine does not, but I don’t think I’d mind if she did. What about your boss? Again, mine doesn’t but it would be okay.
But some bloggers have a different persona on their blogs than in daily life, or tell stories about their employers, or complain about their spouses. Can you imagine someone coming up to you and saying, “Are you [your blog name here]? If so — ” Does the thought send chills down your spine?
Not me. My life is an open book. Or, as the saying goes, “If you can’t be good, be careful.”
Me, too. Open book. But I’ve learned to be more careful regarding my children; blogging about them, not reading theirs, of course. But this is another reason to move to the more anonymous Blogger, I think. Or even Typepad. Xanga is so trendy, but it is so easy and convenient, too.
I would like to be but dh is deathly afraid of any of his family ever finding my blog! LOL I don’t know why. It’s mostly just knitting and kiddo stuff. He hates it when I talk anything about him! 😛
I’m glad you can trust your son to have his own space too. Sounds like a great bunch of kids you got there. 🙂
Funny you should mention that. I recently realized that my carelessness with my identity could come back to haunt me. I have inadvertently given away enough information about another person to be harmful to them in the wrong hands. Now I’m working on coming up with clever nicknames for the people I write about.
My nick is actually part of my real name…I don’t particularly care if anyone from around here (meaning where I live) figures out its me. I figure if you’re going to put up a diary of sorts online that its all fair game. And as far as the tracker stuff goes, I have one on mine, but not to see who’s “stalking” me. Mostly its to see if anyone’s actually looking at my site! Yeah, I’m vain that way! 🙂 But some of the others out there with tracker take it a bit too far and start posting stuff like “I know you’re there” etc. Mind you there are a few that get harrassed, but there are those that totally freak if they get more than one anonymous hit with the same ID. Its getting crazy out there!
I’m pretty much open book too. My mom doesn’t read my blog, there’s stuff there that she probably wouldn’t like, but I’m ok with that…I’m a BIG girl now! LOL And my boss wouldn’t care either way…so long as I wasn’t bashing his ass from here to Timbuktu!
Great post!
I am Hercule Poirot.
However, I am also good and careful. As opposed to careful and good which sounds weird.
Well I can honestly say that our Mom has no idea what Xanga is or how to get to it and we want it kept that way! My sister and I speak freely to each other on our Xanga’s and while we are not nasty about our mom, she would be hurt if she read some of our entries. It’s our place to blow off steam and we would never want Mom to witness that. I am careful about names and such on xanga, but again I think that is someone were to study my blog they could figure out where I live.
My mother thinks that a xanga is some kind of sushi… so I’m safe. In a family of technophobes I am assured privacy, especially since I’m the geekiest we have. My close friends who have xanga sites know who I am, but I still use aliases for all of my friends. We know who we are but I keep it private.
I think #2 son might feel like his xanga is more like a diary and it’s invasive when somebody reads it. But why post things that are so personal on the internet? That’s what good old fashioned books and pens are for… and why learning to read and write in another language can be beneficial if you have a large family. 😉
Hope you get this even though it’s a bit late in coming… I’ve been playing with dollhouse stuff too much to play online. Still fighting the micro-elephant…. Anyway, good luck!