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amulNote: I've now realized that this is going to be a very long organizational process which I'll need to do in stages, and that you're going to be subjected to several of these rants before any useful conclusions are drawn.
So, I decided that with the purchase of my new google-enhanced G1 cell phone, I may as well try to migrate entirely over to Google. A choice which caused me to question my very existence.
By which I mean, "Where do I exist on the internet? Should I move it over to Google? Why do I exist there? What do people see of me from that angle?"
At the most basic level, we might think of me as existing at each email address I own. I have separate emails for Work (Commercial), Work (Art), Work (Art Sales), Work (Website Related), Social, Kinky, and Relatively Anonymous. Nearly all of these get a massive amount of spam, and as it turns out, nearly all of them have an associated Google Account, because every time you even walk past a Google product, it generates an account for you on the entire network.
If we increase the definition of "email address" to include anywhere that I can receive a message, then that includes a bunch of social media sites: Myspace, Livejournal (x2), Facebook, Photo.net, Photoshop User, Deviant Art, Flickr, Teddy Talk, Renderosity, OK Cupid, CollarMe, Alt.com, FetLife, PolyWeekly Forums and now Twitter.
There are some deeper questions that have occurred to me. For instance, Google, and most websites, seem to only distinguish between two levels of privacy: that which no one should know but you, and that which the entire world can find out by accident. While brushing their teeth.
This is a real problem for me, because even though I espouse a greater degree of honesty and up-frontness, even I realize that there are some people that I don't want to see certain stuff. Life involves a certain amount of discretion. Especially when you have a large number of alt-lifestyle choices.
It wouldn't be as much of a problem, except that so many people are on these sites and do not seem to consider what sort of discretion I'm trying to achieve. On MySpace, I thought my account was a fairly vanilla piece of advertising. Except that several BDSM event promoters have commented on my wall with references to kink.
Likewise, I consider my Facebook account strictly for work. So how am I supposed to handle the high school acquaintance who scribbled on my profile page, "I always wondered if you were gay in high school. Were you sucking cock back then?" Never mind the mind-boggling society we've created where some dude who hasn't spoken to me in the 20 years since he tried to give me a swirlie feels like he has the right to ask me these questions in front of, quite literally, the entire world.
The problem is one of attitudinal drift. I meant it for work, but then I saw a friend of mine on there, and so I friended him. And once you've friended someone, you can't ever unfriend them. It's some kind of implicit rule. But if you friend everyone you've ever met, then you've lost the functionality of keeping in touch with those who really matter to you.
Which was never the point of signing on in the first place.
So how do I organize all of this information so that it flows neatly and consistently towards me, only revealing myself to the people I chose to, at the degrees that I choose to show myself to? How do I synchronize it all in a coherent, functional way that actually taps into the usefulness of the internet, without subjecting potential clients to either the vivid descriptions of sadism that I regularly engage in, or the whining poetry I write about my ex-girlfriend?
When the only people I know who have twitter accounts are kinky freaks, how can I make my twitter account a work account? What does a work twitter look like?
Okay. So, all I've really figured out in this rambling is that I need to think about what sort of mask I'm wearing when I'm at each site/net-connection-point. These roughly divide into Work, Social, and Segregated Identity.
Since I'm basically a low-level Polyamory and BDSM Activist at this point, it should be safe to migrate all of my social email address stuff into my kink email, which is already on Gmail. However, I think I'll maintain the address at its original domain, rather than giving it up. This way, I'm not strictly tied to Google's ascendency for my general social life, only my kink life.
I should probably redesign things so that my kink email address is persistent and does not route through Gmail, which feels dumb, cuz I just set the thing up this year.
Work Persona
Work (Commercial) email, Work (Art) email, Work (Art Sales) email, Work (Website Related) email, Myspace, Livejournal Feed From Blog, Facebook, Photo.net, Photoshop User, Deviant Art, Flickr, Teddy Talk, Renderosity, Twitter.
Model Mayhem, One Model Place
Social Persona
Social email , Kinky email -> Google
Livejournal, OK Cupid, CollarMe, Alt.com, FetLife, PolyWeekly Forums
Unconnected Personae
Relatively Anonymous email
So, I decided that with the purchase of my new google-enhanced G1 cell phone, I may as well try to migrate entirely over to Google. A choice which caused me to question my very existence.
By which I mean, "Where do I exist on the internet? Should I move it over to Google? Why do I exist there? What do people see of me from that angle?"
At the most basic level, we might think of me as existing at each email address I own. I have separate emails for Work (Commercial), Work (Art), Work (Art Sales), Work (Website Related), Social, Kinky, and Relatively Anonymous. Nearly all of these get a massive amount of spam, and as it turns out, nearly all of them have an associated Google Account, because every time you even walk past a Google product, it generates an account for you on the entire network.
If we increase the definition of "email address" to include anywhere that I can receive a message, then that includes a bunch of social media sites: Myspace, Livejournal (x2), Facebook, Photo.net, Photoshop User, Deviant Art, Flickr, Teddy Talk, Renderosity, OK Cupid, CollarMe, Alt.com, FetLife, PolyWeekly Forums and now Twitter.
There are some deeper questions that have occurred to me. For instance, Google, and most websites, seem to only distinguish between two levels of privacy: that which no one should know but you, and that which the entire world can find out by accident. While brushing their teeth.
This is a real problem for me, because even though I espouse a greater degree of honesty and up-frontness, even I realize that there are some people that I don't want to see certain stuff. Life involves a certain amount of discretion. Especially when you have a large number of alt-lifestyle choices.
It wouldn't be as much of a problem, except that so many people are on these sites and do not seem to consider what sort of discretion I'm trying to achieve. On MySpace, I thought my account was a fairly vanilla piece of advertising. Except that several BDSM event promoters have commented on my wall with references to kink.
Likewise, I consider my Facebook account strictly for work. So how am I supposed to handle the high school acquaintance who scribbled on my profile page, "I always wondered if you were gay in high school. Were you sucking cock back then?" Never mind the mind-boggling society we've created where some dude who hasn't spoken to me in the 20 years since he tried to give me a swirlie feels like he has the right to ask me these questions in front of, quite literally, the entire world.
The problem is one of attitudinal drift. I meant it for work, but then I saw a friend of mine on there, and so I friended him. And once you've friended someone, you can't ever unfriend them. It's some kind of implicit rule. But if you friend everyone you've ever met, then you've lost the functionality of keeping in touch with those who really matter to you.
Which was never the point of signing on in the first place.
So how do I organize all of this information so that it flows neatly and consistently towards me, only revealing myself to the people I chose to, at the degrees that I choose to show myself to? How do I synchronize it all in a coherent, functional way that actually taps into the usefulness of the internet, without subjecting potential clients to either the vivid descriptions of sadism that I regularly engage in, or the whining poetry I write about my ex-girlfriend?
When the only people I know who have twitter accounts are kinky freaks, how can I make my twitter account a work account? What does a work twitter look like?
Okay. So, all I've really figured out in this rambling is that I need to think about what sort of mask I'm wearing when I'm at each site/net-connection-point. These roughly divide into Work, Social, and Segregated Identity.
Since I'm basically a low-level Polyamory and BDSM Activist at this point, it should be safe to migrate all of my social email address stuff into my kink email, which is already on Gmail. However, I think I'll maintain the address at its original domain, rather than giving it up. This way, I'm not strictly tied to Google's ascendency for my general social life, only my kink life.
I should probably redesign things so that my kink email address is persistent and does not route through Gmail, which feels dumb, cuz I just set the thing up this year.
Work Persona
Work (Commercial) email, Work (Art) email, Work (Art Sales) email, Work (Website Related) email, Myspace, Livejournal Feed From Blog, Facebook, Photo.net, Photoshop User, Deviant Art, Flickr, Teddy Talk, Renderosity, Twitter.
Model Mayhem, One Model Place
Social Persona
Social email , Kinky email -> Google
Livejournal, OK Cupid, CollarMe, Alt.com, FetLife, PolyWeekly Forums
Unconnected Personae
Relatively Anonymous email
