Furthermore, when we meet, should I mention having found said blog, or feign ignorance? Hypothetically. :-)

Not creepy. Normal.

At an appropriate time in the conversation quote from her blog to her, then wink. Winking needs to come back.

I've had this happen to me countless times. I don't think there's an easy answer--much of it will depend on you.

I've had people read my stuff and then take it verbatim and practically throw it back at me or "test" me or whatever--it's fucking annoying and I don't bother seeing them again.

I've also had the opposite, where the person just reads it and takes it for what it is and that's cool.

So, really, I don't think it's how much you read, it's what you take from what you read. The person's blog is but a sliver of their personality. I think a lot of people read things like that and assume that's the person in total. For instance, I rarely talk about the things I write about--to some people that's a relief, to others it's a disappointment.

Well, what I would do is look at it all I want and then feign ignorance.

So....you should do the exact opposite of that if you don't want to fuck everything up.

Normal to have done so if you met her on-line. Definitely mention it, or risk that situation where you the lie compounds and you end up in all sorts of shit because you didn't tell her at your first date. Saying something complimentary about her site won't hurt your chances of a bit of horizontal folk-dancing, either, I imagine.

Oh, and so, where's her blog?

If the conversation inclines towards the internet, perhaps you could mention, "Do you have a blog?"

If they're really open about it, you can say - "oh, ah ha, that was you... <insert praise>.

If they get defensive then you can say you have a blog or don't or you just participate in fora, &c.

Are you sure it's her weblog, and not someone else with the same username?

If someone has a blog that is that easy to find then I don't really think they have much of place to complain that you found it and read some. I'd think it shows you are interested in her that you took the time to read some of it.

you can read all of it (and not mention it) but what if you read something that turns you off?

there's nothing creepy about it. SHE PUT IT ON THE FREAKING INTERNET, DUDE.

Read all of it. Don't bring its contents up in conversation.

For online dating? I think it's practically a requirement to do some googling.

For starters, it's a good way to make sure he/she/they aren't married with kids or members of a voraphilia forum or something squicky like that.

I don't think that there's been a developed and concrete convention for revealing said googling, though. We're still kind of in new territory there.

But if either party is even remotely tech savvy, it's probably a given anyway. Though, I've had at least two first dates where we've both brought it up and it was no big deal.

It's only creepy AFTER the restraining order has been received, dude.

I'd read. Probably not a lot, because I wouldn't want to spoil the (potential) fun of discovering things face to face, but I'd have a look.

I'd also definitely say that I checked it out. One, it's something to talk about. Two, keeping it a "secret" would make things uncomfortable for me from the get-go. Three, it would be interesting to hear how they view their own blog ("I mostly use it to vent", "it's a way to keep my friends updated", "there's a lot I don't talk about", whatever...). We read a lot of blogs, but we rarely get the chance to hear what the author has to say about one in person.

Also, I wouldn't read very much, because I'd hate to have this sort of conversation:

She: Oh, I just finished that new Blahblah novel.

He: Oh, yeah, I saw that in your blog. I agree with what you said there.

She: Ah! So... Um. What's new with you, besides the promotion I read about in your blog?

He: Well, just that, pretty much.

She: I see. Nice day, isn't it?

Hack into the blog and fill it full of posts praising yourself.

"Dear Blog. Met a great Guy. He's Fantastic. He's like a modern rennaisance man. I love him, and thank god I can rid myself of all those annoying hangers-on I call friend. I hate those people. esp. best friend yyyy. She's a bitch and I never want to see her pox ridden body again."

Deny all knowledge afterwards.

"there's nothing creepy about it. SHE PUT IT ON THE FREAKING INTERNET, DUDE."

I disagree, though it's taken me a long time to come around to this way of thinking.

My personality type being what it is, I like to know everything and am willing to use any and all resources available to do so. As a result, I know a lot of things about people I know, from relatives to old friends to casual acquaintances to net friends, via Googling and even paying for background checks.

Is that right? Are you willing to say that's right when we get into the realm of background checks?

I've long been hostile to the idea that people have some sort of a natural "right" to privacy, notwithstanding what the SCOTUS has to say on the matter. Through most of the history of humanity people lived without the kind of urban anonymity that most people enjoy today, and I think mostly that anonymity has made our lives worse, not better. So I'm not at all sorry to see it fade away in the information era.

But the easy availability of information about other people—indeed, that it's almost hard to ignore—throughout human history had/has its own set of challenges. Namely, that we don't want to know everything about everyone else. How do we handle that? Through instinctive social conventions of discretion. We don't read each others' mail or diaries, even if they are within hands' reach. We don't look in each others' windows, even if the curtains are pulled and everything within in plain sight. We don't eavesdrop on all nearby conversations.

We learn to respect other people's privacy.

This is what we'll have to learn to do in the information era. We'll learn to not instantly Google everyone we meet. We'll learn discretion.

Putting objections to evolutionary psychology and related concepts aside, I think there's something similar to this built right into the wiring of our brains. If you've read anything about the research relating to FACS—the facial expressions system and related research—you know that there are things called "microexpressions" which give away many of our states of mind which we sometimes unconsciously notice and sometimes don't. The main idea here, for my purposes, is that there's lots of information available in people's expressions that we seem to ignore. Why would that be? Well, in the very same way that there's utility in our being willfully ignorant of something private to someone else, there's social utility in our being ignorant of much of other people's inner-state. Some things we need to know, other things we don't.

So my answer to you question is ambivalent. Right now, in the wild west of the information age, and in line with my own inclinations regarding "knowledge is power", I'd say, yes, learn everything you can. A more thoughtful, less selfish part of me says something different: learn restraint. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

having decided to develop some restraint, i didn't read any of that, keith!

If you put it on the internet, when someone looks it up and reads it, it's called "reading," not "stalking." Big difference. It's public, like engraving your words on the side of a plaque and plopping it in the village green. If a suitor makes it a point to go check out what the crazy engraver wrote, that ain't stalking. That's just smart.

We learn to respect other people's privacy.

...but a blog is by it's very definition public. It's not a private diary. Am I stalking if I read mimismartypants ever week? If I follow someone's profile and click through to their blog (which can be highly rewarding reading, btw)?

Is a public life somehow private? I don't buy it.

If it's good convo for a first date is another question---it can come off as very inane as dobbs points out. I think, however, that you can take a pre-date googling pretty much for granted these days.

Read all of it. There're far too many surprises in dating these days, and not all of them happy surprises.
;-)

I think you should read a little bit of it- maybe the past month or so, before you mention it to her that you found it. I've had a blog for years, and I don't know that what I wrote 3 years ago necessarily is how I would define myself now.

If you're going to read her blog, you might as well send her a link to this thread.

Honestly, now. This is agropyron's doing, isn't it?

I dated a guy recently and only found his blog after things started going sour. (When I went into bitter stalker mode.) Wish I'd read it earlier. Boy, was it pompous. His emails were lovely - well written and humorous. His blog was a ponderous opaque mess.

That said, even though I knew full well I had slipped into bitter stalker mode, I felt weird reading more than a few entries.

I would read it all, and at the date carefully use some of the information to make a good impression and get into her--well, you know. Mention one of her favorite books or musicians of something as one of your own favorites. At the very least, don't mention the blog on the date and then go back the next day and see what she says about you.

I am a bad person.

OK, 'splain this to me: when someone writes and publishes their writing does this mean it is only to be read by strangers who will never meet the writer?

I am deeply puzzled by the notion that public acts can be censored from public critque. Somehow, the notion that one can project oneself in public and simultaneously claim that is private is a new one. I mean, just because there is this conceit about using handles doesn't grant an automatic cloak of darkness. Does it?

I've got slightly more complicated privacy issues than most people, but I've never treated my handle as granting the privilege of silencing people or forbidding them from reading work that I had published. Yet that appears to be what the issue is here.

I mean, suppose you run into Mark Twain. Do you beat around the bush over whether or not you'd read some of his old newspaper articles?

Please, somebody take a stab at explaining the underlying assumptions.

Well, it's tricky, warbaby. She didn't publish it under her legal name- so she probably doesn't assume that people she meets in "real life" read it. Keep in mind most people don't have their online and real lifes intertwined the way we do. I like to know who is reading my blog and who isn't, especially if I didn't tell them about it. In general, I assume anyone who knows me via Mefi/Mecha reads it, and anyone who knows me in real life does not, since it's not tied to my real name. I did start writing it with the assumption that only people I don't know would be reading it, although that's changed over the years. It's not necessarily that I don't want people to read it, it's just that I would like to know if they're going to. Is callmejay required to tell his date that he found it? No, but I think it would be the nice thing to do- who knows how she feels about this subject.

And yes, the internet is "public"- but not everyone knows that, or realizes it to the extent where they know they need to censor themselves sometimes to avoid getting fired or damaging relationships.

but, TPS, she has a blog under her username, as callmejay says. She does not seem too preoccupied with the notion of privacy there. However, she did not mention her blog to him (and this could be due to various reasons) so him admitting he found it also shows that he bothered enough to go googling for her. Maybe he does not want her to know that yet.

on preview, I totally agree with your second comment.

I, too, think Googling a new date is required, not just recommended.

Also, agreed that this is public information. Anyone whose presence on the internet is something more personal and revealing than race results or mentions in the local paper must understand that their presence is public, and available to anyone, as obvious to your potential dates as is the make, model, year, condition, and bumper stickers on your car. Maybe not everyone knows that now, but the days when ignorance is an excuse are coming to a swift end.

I also think that the widespread acceptance that the internet is a public forum (blog 'outing', for instance), will be an important step in reining in the 'Wild West' nature that kmellis is talking about, encouraging people to take full responsibility for their identities both on- and off-line.

And then, there's this. I completely agree with warbaby, for the most part. But there's a troublesome analogy with journalism. Historically in the US, information that's generally available in public life has been considered acceptable to use in reporting information.That is to say, if you're walking on a public street or in a park, and some paparazzi wants to take your picture and describe what you're doing, there's nothing much you can do about it. By appearing in public you give up a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, let's say you join a beach club that has a fee-based, private membership. When you walk around in the beach club, even if a journalist or photographer is also a member, that person cannot take your picture or write about what you do there without violating ethics and exposing him or herself to lawsuit. ACtions taken on private property are far more protected than those in public.

So the question then is: are there parts of the Internet that can be considered private zones? How would they be designated? Would it be determined based on membership fee (so, say, MeFi would now qualify as private, and anything I wrote there couldn't be harvested, republished, and attributed to me?)? Or would it be private based on some degree of cloaked registration and password protection>? Could there be any restrictions on use of information found in such a private zone?

Doesn't seem workable to me, but it is an interesting question.

To come back to the topic -- I Google people liberally, and I don't feel the least bad about it. Do it; and furthermore, expect your dates to do it to you. It might pay off to Google yourself pretty well, and find out what others are finding out about you. Know who you are on the intrawebs.

Incidentally, there's nothing new under the sun -- this worked in the pre-web days, as well. it's just that the ease of publishing to the web removes filters, so people leave much more of a name trail in the public record than they used to when almost all print material went through an editor and was harder to search. Case in point: In high school I had a boyfriend who my mom just distrusted. She is a journalist. She looked his name up in the newspaper archives and found that he'd been convicted of an armed robbery. Surprise, surprise. Accountability -- it's a bitch.

P.S. I don't think you're required to tell your date you've Googled them, any more than you'd tell your new date "I asked a lot of people what they knew about you." That's just weird. Let them bring it up.

This was handled beautifully in my life recently. I Googled the guy, and everything was fine with the bio he had given me, though he had written some fiction stories that had some interesting content, some of which was curiosity-inducing. Not scary, but enough to make me wonder (how biographical is this, etc?).

In one of our earliest conversations, he mentioned a few of the stories and described what he was doing with his writing, what his aims were, how he arrived at his themes. It cleared up any concern I had instantly. I'm sure he knew what I'd find by Googling him and wanted to address my concerns right off the bat -- and I appreciated that I didn't have to ask and didn't have to spend a long time wondering.

Just a very modern interaction, graciously handled. I thought it was respectful, even, and it showed that he knew that as a 21st century single woman I could be expected to take certain steps to guard against creeps.

It's the people who tie the innocuous concept of "googling" to the loaded concept of "stalking" who are committing the crime. Sometimes, when those people are loud and shrill enough, they can irreparably damage the reputations of innocents. Why, I've seen it happen on Meffy.

Just because one might be embarrassed by what one wrote elsewhere in the past, punishing someone else for finding it is never okay.

TPS - I follow your argument, but there seem to be some unexamined assumptions in it. Why should anyone assume that the use of a nickname confers a privileged status? That is a very widespread assumption and needs to be explored.

Miko - Public sidewalk and private club are pretty clear. Public and private are right there up front. So that isn't it. Journalistically speaking (I've been an investigative reporter for over a decade) people who inject themselves into public issues or public forums become public people. The value they recieve from being famous or elected or entertainers is paid for by the free and public discussion -- and criticism -- of their lives and personalities. Just because an actor uses a stage name doesn't privilege them against critics.

I think a lot of this issue of public v. private is deeply embedded in administrative governance: the framework of power, politics and common law that exists inside of institutions. Very few of us directly experience democratic or republican governance, most of us are ruled in our daily lives by administrators, bureaucrats, bosses, etc.

Think about it for a minute: most of our experience of being governed is administrative and encompassed by the privilege and power granted by hierarchical organizations. Nametags at work and who has to wear them and how they are displayed. Who makes the rules and who exercises authority and who follows the rules (or can break them or make them up with impunity) or follows orders rather than giving them.

The whole essence of administrative governance is irresponsible power -- the ability to enforce one's will without ever being called into account.

Aren't the underlying assumptions about "privacy" (which I maintain is popularly understood as not as a right, but as a priviledge to enforce one's will on others) really a way of trying to act like one's betters in a hierarchical institution?

A lot of the smuggled assumptions I'm sniffing in this whole ball of wax seem deeply anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian.

So I'm questioning them and asking you to do the same.

TPS - I follow your argument, but there seem to be some unexamined assumptions in it. Why should anyone assume that the use of a nickname confers a privileged status?

Because a lot of people do have a lot of unexamined assumptions about the internet (I would argue the general population as a whole)? There are still people with blogs with their full names and their full company name writing about how much they hate their boss. Because the whole idea that someone could even have an "online persona" is about, what, 15 years old, tops, to those of us who ARE ultra internet dorks?

Reading back over all your thoughts, I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make.

I don't think Googling or reading a blog is creepy.

I think it does fall under the rule that if you meet a potential partner online, you should meet him or her fairly quickly so you don't build up an unrealistic expectation based on just the written word.

Making sure your date is, for the most part, who he says he is seems like a fairly standard safety precaution. Delving into your date's inner thoughts before you've even had coffee doesn't seem creepy, per se, but just a bit problematic. The stuff that's public is probably stuff that she's willing to share with you, but your learning it now throws off the time table. I mean, I have no problem telling people I know about, for instance, my mother's death or my ex-boyfriend's mental breakdown when we broke up or my father's stroke, but... that's kinda heavy for an early-stages relationship. I'd feel very weird on a first date if the guy knew all that about me already, because he wouldn't have enough context for it.

And I think it also limits the conversation about those things, because it's like, "Yeah, read it on your blog" isn't the response to encourage a deeper exploration of something. (And at the same time, you don't want to pretend you *haven't* read it, because that feels like lying.)

On the other hand, if she's just blogging about books and music, it's probably less of an issue. But I still wouldn't read too much of it now -- wait until the second or third date, and then get all obsessive! :-)

I full-on believe in accountability and I think everyone here knows that. It's why, other than mefi, I use "kmellis" and have always made my real name easily available.

But notice that we think that stalking is wrong and that stalking usually occurs when the stalkee is in public. It's not a matter of quality, it's a matter of quantity. Yes, the stuff we put online is public. But, no, it's not appropriate for someone, without a good reason, to assemble every bit of that online information and assemble a dossier—just as it's not appropriate to tail a new aquaintance for a couple of days and make a list of all the people he meets and the places he goes.

Aside from the stalking business, which is a special case and exists (mostly) in the context of sexism and violence against women, this sort of extreme snooping isn't and shouldn't be a matter of law. It is, and should be, a matter of social convention, courtesy, pragmatism.

The test should be something like "what do I have a reasonable need to know?". A quick Google search on a date is reasonable. An exhaustive search probably isn't.

Surely it means something that I'm making these points. First of all, I'm all about transparency and accountability and have a clear and long line record of this. Secondly, I also am incredibly nosy and take great comfort in knowing a lot of things about people that they don't realize I know. But I recognize this as a vice. More importantly, I recognize that there's good, pragmatic reasons why it's not in everyone's interest for everyone to know everything about everyone else.

A good model is how (healthy) people live with each other. Most of us create various zones of privacy for other people even though we are not forced to do so. Do you want to know when your roommate is mastubating?

Do you want to know when your roommate is mastubating?

If I answer that honestly, will a future date stumble upon my answer and be totally freaked out?

Kidding, Mr. Right. Kidding.

I don't question the fact that people have these weird beliefs about "net personas" and "nobody knows you're a dog on the internet" (as that famous New Yorker cartoon has it.)

What I'm wrestling with (and this has been going on for a long time, about ten years to be exact) is the goofy assumptions that underly the fact that people have these wierd beliefs about what they call "privacy."

I honestly do think this is rooted in how power is exercised in people's daily lives and that most of us live in a world of institutions (as opposed to tribes, markets or networks) as the dominant cultural form.

I'm not so much trying to make a point as to clarify my own thinking and understanding. If I do eventually get a point, it should make a smoking good feature story or essay.

I'll be sure to Google you and read it before we go on a date ;-)

Like in Las Vegas?

Public and private are right there up front. So that isn't it.

Yeah, warbaby, I'm not following you either. What I was asking is this: are there analogues to 'public' and 'private' spaces on the internet? Are there spaces on the internet where a reasonable expectation of privacy can exist? I think that so far the answer is no, but I imagine as online communications continue to develop, we may see some analogue emerge.

But I may be talking past you, since you seem to be working on questioning the entire idea of privacy.

kmellis is right in that illegal is one thing, courteous is another thing entirely. But I just don't think it's wrong to Google people, even exhaustively; Googling and stalking are emphatically not the same thing. Since I was stalked at one point, I feel entitled to speak on the topic; and that experience is exactly why I Google people exaustively. I want data.

I see occhi's point, though, that it puts the cart before the horse to be too well informed about someone. In a relationship, the 'early reveal' phase is terribly important to building intimacy. Any online picture of a person is a thin representation of their actual existence, anyway. But I still feel like if you want to control who reads and doesn't read your personal ruminations, then don't write a blog; write e-mails. And recognize that even they aren't private.

So in the case I mentioned before, I did know something about the guy's work before I met him. When he mentioned it, I didn't out and say "Yeah, I know all about it, I read your work;" but nor did I lie and say "Oh really, you write? I'd love to read your work sometime." I said, in essence, 'tell me more about your writing', after he had already told me a bit about what he did.

If you do Google someone, it helps to not fully assume that a) everything you read is true and accurate, or b) that it's even the same person as the one you know. I don't consider anything strongly believable until I hear it from the horse's mouth -- and if there's a deviation from the web record, that's a red flag, but not necessarily a death knell.

{off topic}

LAS VEGAS! I'm so excited that I've decided that I am DEFINITELY going to Vegas! The conference I thought would interfere won't, and I just got a raise! YAHOO LAS VEGAS!

{/off topic}

I, too, think it's fine to read the blog, just as it would be fine to read short stories that someone had published, or their novel. There is a level of courtesy involved, and I guess that for me that courtesy is expressed in how and where you use the public information that you get. This may even extend to how you feel as you get it and once you have it.

To follow up on Keith's point about roommate masturbation: for several years I was a raft guide and kayak instructor and spent a lot of my time living in bunk rooms. I remember one night settling down to sleep with just one other guy in the room when it became clear that he was jacking off. It didn't make me particularly uncomfortable, but I have no doubt that he knew that I knew that he was getting off. He'd been in the Army before that job and had lived communally for a long time, and I'm sure that he didn't think it an invasion that I knew what he was doing. I'm also fairly certain, though, that he would have considered it an invasion had I tried to embarrass him with the information or even bring it up at some later time. Not doing so was the matter of courtesy.

(Incidentally, I haven't been around Mecha much, overwhelmed by the volume of fluffy threads, but this thread is superlative.)