Exposed, by Emily Gould, former editor/writer at Gawker. ⇒
22 May 2008, mid-morning
All about Too Much Information on the web. This link was found via MetaFilter.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
I am so glad you posted this. Over the last few months, largely due to constant problems with my girlfriend, who has been greatly bothered by my massive online presence, I’ve completely withdrawn myself from the Internet. No more Facebook, Myspace, blogs, social networking, anything. There are things I can’t delete, unfortunately, but everything I can reach is gone.
Frankly, I feel relief. I am mildly embarrassed at how exposed I was. There’s over ten years of my blathering nonsense out there, and I don’t think we’ve fully come to terms with the effect this all has on our private lives.
I used to think that people who stayed away from this stuff were crazy Luddites trying to hold back the flood, but now I find myself wondering why I was ever so caught up in all of this stuff.
Mind you, I’m posting this in a comment on a blog, so I’m still capable of hypocrisy. Good to know.
by Ben on May 22 2008, 1:44 pm #
Oh, and I want to add, to amplify the comments at MeFi, that she’s still doing the same thing. Her self-obsession is astounding. It sounds like a sickness. And having been that way in my early 20s, I have to say that I am really glad I can recognize it and not justify it. It’s disgusting.
(Part of why I still love Funkaoshi is the casual impression that one gets of Ram – we don’t know his innermost emotions or every detail of his life. We can get a rough impression, but you’d have to be delusional to think you really knew him from this place.)
by Ben on May 22 2008, 1:48 pm #
I was wondering where your sites all went to. I thought maybe you were employed in some profession where you had to kill off all your presence on the net. (I have a few friends who are teachers that do this.) And yeah, I try to run this site like it was an impersonal personal weblog. I think more of my life bleeds out on Flickr. I also don’t think Emily Gould is that exceptional. Lots of people don’t seem to know when to stop sharing.
by ramanan on May 22 2008, 2:03 pm #
This post from NY Mag is a great follow-up.
by ramanan on May 22 2008, 5:03 pm #