flemmings | (no subject)

In another instance of all occasions informing against me, I was just thinking Friday evening that I've entrusted my diaretic record of this decade to the internet rather than to paper. Should the internet become inaccessible (as it does from time to time just from server woes) there go my memories of the oh-noes.

When she was considering taking Aesthe online, Fearless Leader said "It's always there. Years from now what you write will be out there for people to read." Fogey me was dubious and still is. Yesterday has done nothing to make me feel different.

The only records that stay online seem to be the ones you don't want to and can't erase- as I am still trying to remove a simple name from the fiction archive, which will not remove no matter what I'm told to do. The name is in a file somewhere and exists in a distinctive form and I just can't find it. And if I don't, when this woman goes job-hunting google will tell her employers that her name is on a m-m site. She has the even worse task of trying to remove an actual fic with her name on it from geocities. No one told you ten years ago Never put your real name on the net. Ah google, what hast thou wrought? In the present social climate down south, being an enthusiastic yaoi fan in the 90's is shaping up to be the same as joining the Communist party in the 30's- something someone will get you for 15 years down the line.

As for the blogs and ljs- well. Paper disintegrates too, of course, and one's own handwriting can be a pain to read. Still in time I may go back to the paper record. These things go in cycles, in the general population as well as personally. Right now words don't seem real unless (how ironic) they're on a screen and online where other people can read them and so validate their existence. But in a year or two things may have shifted back to the need for privacy and security- the pen, the book, the record no one is likely to see ever until I'm dead and quite indifferent to who reads it.

Mh- dead and indifferent. That's kind of odd, now I think about it, given how much the notion of 'what will people think of me when I'm gone?' has exercised the culture I live in and the people who wrote. 'O what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me' doesn't cut it much any more, does it? Alive, yes, one wants to be well thought of. Dead, what difference does it make? End of a tradition.

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Aha! Curiouser and curiouser. I was just reading an entry about how to erase your Google trail. (For some reason, I expected it to be a small bit of technological wizardry. It was, of course, nothing of the kind - more a thoughtful step-by-step list of things you should do to check that there are no suspicious links attached to your real name.)
No one told you ten years ago Never put your real name on the net.
hmm...I dunno - I always took it as a given? But I'm the kind of freak who looks up people from middle school on the net when she's bored, so I can easily picture a future employer or casual acquaintance doing the same.
The one time I attended Yaoicon, I used my online name because I thought people would find it easier (unfamiliar name with two syllables versus unfamiliar name with three syllables - I still can't bring myself to adopt a westernised online name), so many of the people who've met me in real life still don't know what my real name is...
I don't know whether that makes me feel safe or sad, actually.

There's no hope for me then. My name is everywhere. Most times in its fullness and its real-ness.

^__^

Are you looking for a fic you wrote and can't remember the title off and want to delete? Or you try to delete it and it doesn;t want to be deleted?

No one told you ten years ago Never put your real name on the net.

Have to agree with

unearthly_calm... I never used my real name. However, ten years ago I was a wee sprite, well-warned to be paranoid of pedophiles, and so created a pen name to use instead. To an adult not worried about such a thing, the idea might never have occurred.

As far as blogging... I never seem to say anything of importance, so I'm not worried. *grins*

Neither of the above. Somebody submitted a fic to the Aestheticism archive and by some chance her real name got put into the author list as well as the pseudonym under which you can find the story. I'm trying to delete her name from the author list, because if you google that name our author list is the first thing that shows up. I've removed it from three files now but nooo, the name's still there.

No one told you ten years ago Never put your real name on the net.

Um, joking, right? 'Cause of course they did. You wanna see my old usenet posts from the early '90s? All available, and they always have been, first via dejanews, then via google groups after the buyout. My posts to a variety of mailing lists, same deal. And they've all got my name on 'em, which didn't bother me overmuch. I mean, hey, if you want my opinions on shoujo anime, feel free to read 'em.

It's even less of a big deal because a) I have such a dirt common name -- you'll get hundreds of hits that aren't me if you plug me into a search engine; and b) my business has been online for years, and my business *is* me. So it's unavoidable. The email address is a slightly more specific indicator, but same deal holds.

That said, eventually I did get a bit tired of automatically censoring nine-tenths of what I said on any given subject. Hence policy change with LJ account. It didn't help -- people keep finding me anyway. This is life. But they do have to work a bit harder now.

Um, joking, right?

No. See the post below yours. Maybe if you were around from the early days you knew, but when I came into the chaos that was the internet in the mid-90s with my slow modem it was all fragmented groups and impossible to find anything you wanted. Search engines had Alzheimer's, as someone complained:

Like talking to your elderly father:
"Did you have a nice birthday, Dad?"
"Nice? Nice- that's where your mum and I went on our honeymoon and played the casinos. Hard to understand all those Frenchies. Expensive too, but the wine was good. But why aren't you asking me about my birthday?"

The notion that anyone could be found by a search engine that searched search engines was years away.

However there's a lot to be said for sharing initials with Michael Jackson and his outfit.

Having opinons on shoujo anime is one thing- weird, but ok shrug. Writing yaoi is quite another, especially if you're going for a mainsteam job.

I think it may have had more to do with end purposes. Y'see, my own primary reason for finding a route onto the Internet, as opposed to continuing to puddle about on the BBS systems, private and public (like AOL, GEnie, etc.), was access to copyediting-L, an already well-known ML. So it was biz from the start for me, and I was always (too) conscious that I didn't know which in-house editors were lurking on that list, and that every syllable I typed was being tucked away into an archive accessible by gopher. I was saving other people's posts to file; I assumed they were doing likewise.

Ingrained tendencies to paranoia resulted from all this, but that's neither here nor there . . .

Usenet with r.a.a, and r.a.m. were extras on the side, but my email address was *the same.* No one kept up multiple personal accounts back then. So I had to be careful of Ye Dignified Online Image even when, say, nattering on about Sailor Moon. On the upside, this stopped me from barreling into flame-fests. Usually.

The notion that anyone could be found by a search engine that searched search engines was years away.

Well, some of us were jockeying for keyword supremacy on AltaVista, WebCrawler, et al. My site was in the top five once. Hard to believe now. *mournful* But, as I said, it had a lot to do with the basic approach to online life. I'd *never* have posted fanfic, even if I'd been inclined that way; I ran searches on myself fairly often to check my site ranking, and dropping my email address into any of the early search engines would have pulled up usenet fanfic instantly. NOT the image we wish to convey . . .

However there's a lot to be said for sharing initials with Michael Jackson and his outfit.

Ha. Me 'n' La Q did discuss adding mjj to our LJ interests at one point (it's true: we sit around dreaming up ways to annoy :), but discovered the Michael connection and decided against it.

Given how I am in person, I figure there's no hope of hiding online either. My employers finding my fanfiction is the least of my worries.

The one thing I do worry about is publishing. If I ever end up writing a book, I will definitely use a pesudonym unconnected to my real name.

In other news, I have purchased volumes one and two of Youmi Henjou Yawa. Trying to read it is giving me the same bug-eyed look of confusion so prominently featured in the pages.

I share your pain and recommend a stiff gin and tonic. Your present confusion, however, will be as nothing to the confusion involved in reading vol 3.

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