Anonymity

Currently listening to: Philosopher by Mi & L'au
On: Pandora, Mirah radio

As you know, I've added a new title to my repertoire: blogger.
While there is a percentage of executives, experts and existentialists using this tool to communicate significant messages to an unlimited, simultaneous, audience, the overwhelming majority are plebians like myself, satisfying the itch to share their piece of the world with the world. There is significance contrived in this blog, in the capability to share my thoughts with the world at large--and in the possibility that I could show up on someone's RSS feeder, to update them on what I ate for dinner.
That is all theoretical, however, because so far the only person invited to read this blog is me and I haven't accepted. As I get more comfortable with blogger and more confident in my hidden identity, that will change, though. I chose anonymity for this blog out of fear. I'm afraid of what my roommates, or my boss, or my boyfriend would say if they read these silly notes. Also, I have residual distrust in the security of internet identity, leftover from a hyper-private father and supported by the numerous identity theft commercials/articles/warnings. Even my facebook doesn't use my whole name. So when I realized that by simply googling the full name of one of my courses, my school pops up first and since it is a class restricted to honors students, I got a little freaked.
Then I googled my name and found two pages of women who were not me. Accounts on facebook, on linked-in, on myspace and other social networking sites I'd never even heard of. Sometimes we had a few interests in common, sometimes not (such as a Canadian doing some kind of research that made me sleepy just reading the google excerpt) and sometimes I was ashamed that we shared the same name, however none of them were me. So as long as I'm careful, and have this little army of not-me's to hide behind, I think I can continue with my new occupation. However, my respect for Moonrat has risen to even greater heights.