Yesterday, Rebecca Thorman and Ryan Healy let out a public announcement about their relationship. In the form of a post on Rebecca’s blog which I thought was fabulous. And really messed up too (but my inner blogger with voyeuristic tendencies can’t resist). After all, if social media is all about transparency, then why aren’t we talking about everything online from the beginning?
But there are such good reasons for not talking about everything online. Holly Hoffman may have blogged openly about her alcoholism but she also waited a year to do so. Milena Thomas is a happy blogger because she has set her boundaries. After all, is it really anyone’s business? Probably not.
And I have my very own, built in appropriate meter. His name is Brian. You may have heard of him, he’s that crazy guy who thought marrying me would be a really great idea. (Side note: it totally was.)
Brian keeps a good portion of my blogging desires off of the internet. I would love write about sex but sex isn’t just about me anymore. It’s really about my husband. And he would rather it if I didn’t tell everyone about his penis. I’d also love to blog about my in-laws. Because on some level, I still identify them as Brian’s family and therefore, I can mentally critique their behavior in a way that I cannot do with my own family. But he is my family and therefore his family is my family and once again, my built in appropriate meter tells me to put the laptop down. I would also blog about some of my more neurotic tendencies but something tells me that Brian would need to be able to show his face in public again and perhaps I should keep my mouth shut.
I’d love to be a totally open book. But I can’t be.
And then I realize how lucky Rebecca and Ryan have been to have the option to keep their romance off of the blogosphere, at least for a little while. They let themselves have time to be quiet and enjoy the newness of what was happening between them.
Brian never had that option. He just had a wife who blogged.
To make up for my own presence in social media, Brian is just not there. He isn’t on twitter. He occasionally comments on Brazen Careerist as his alter-ego but he’ll never have a profile (probably because he knows I would out him fast enough to make his head spin). He finally has a Facebook page, but he only has that because I created it for him, added all of his friends and then informed him that he had to get with the times. (By the way, you should totally add him as a friend and tell him I sent you. He may squirm a little bit but I think it’s good for him and character building).
Brian has been living on the web for through my identity. I tell you about our life together, usually in six hundred words or less. And then you comment while Brian reads. We rarely hear his portion of the experience, just the way I perceive the world happening. His online identity is based largely on how I see him and not as much on how he sees himself.
And for awhile, Ryan was in the same boat. We saw this mysterious “Zeus” character through Rebecca’s eyes. While he probably could have given her a cute little name and blogged about it on Employee Evolution, he didn’t. But since we weren’t reading about him in terms of “Ryan Healy, Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist”, Zeus’s behaviors made sense to us. Will Zeus still make sense to us tomorrow? Or did the assigned alter ego die a public death?
Now that it is all out in the open, will it change the way we perceive Rebecca’s writing? Will we feel more quick to judge now that the whole world knows? Will we find descriptions of interactions more questionable?
Rebecca knows Ryan for who he is at the end of the day and we just have a sense of who he is during the work day. And really what happens between the two of them is none of our business (we’re not investors in their start-ups).
These questions make me happy that B doesn’t have a blog. I’m not sure I could answer any of those questions in my own online life.
Jonathan Fountain said...
1What a self-absorbed post. Do you realize that you just wasted like five minutes of every reader’s life to tell us that you don’t blog about everything in your life because your husband censors you? Oh, and maybe your Zeus doesn’t want me on Facebook friends for him. After all, I don’t KNOW him.
02/11/09 9:09 AM | Comment Link
Carm said...
2I think determining a standard of “appropriate” is respectful and makes sense. We can be transparent and boundaried. We can open up aspects of our lives fully without “exposure” that would damage relationships (particularly important when the information we share is not only about us).
I think this a huge lesson to learn in committed relationships, including friendships.
But, it does require that we prioritize what is most important to us and be willing to protect that which we prioritize. Good post.
02/11/09 12:10 PM | Comment Link
Ryan Healy (AKA Zeus) said...
3Hi Dorie, this is an interesting post. The truth is, it never made a difference to me if the whole world knew about our relationship or if they didn’t. I have an online outlet that lets the world see me the way I would like to be seen. But also, I always like to see how other people describe me or what they think about me, so reading Rebeccas posts was like a little window into how she viewed me and our relationship. I have a feeling that Brian feels the same way. He probably gets a kick out of learning about himself and about your relationship, from your point of view.
Sure, Brians online identity is based on how you see him, but if he hasn’t told you to stop yet, I bet he likes the way you see him.
02/11/09 4:33 PM | Comment Link