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19 June 2007
Do your parents read stuff you post on-line? Do your kids?
I know my mom found my blog, but I kinda doubt she read very far into it. My daughter could probably find it if she tried, and it worries me slightly more that her mother (my ex) has probably found it. I do usually post with some awareness of all that, definitely.
My mom is a true Luddite, so she'll never read my blog. I have these plans to get an expurgated bowdlerized version printed up for her one of these days but it always seems like so much work. My daughter does occasionally read it and is pretty cool thus far. My son thinks I'm a total loser to even have a blog and all he asks is that noone ever take any pictures of him, blog about him, or in fact mention that he exists in any way, shape or form. Any time I ever even mention him and he finds out about it he goes ballistic. So, uh, I have no son. There is no handsome yet self conscious tall skinny 15 year old living at my house. And if there was, well, he would do nothing, ever, that is not the epitome of total and absolute coollness and he never would have done- even as a baby he would have been just so petrifyingly cool it was amazing. If he existed. Which he doesn't.
But my brothers read it and I get the occasional cranky email from them because they do not want to be mentioned any more than my son does. And I think that pretty much every ex I've ever had reads it, but if I think about that I get all eeepy so I refuse to acknowledge their presence for the most part, at least until I run into them and find out that they've been lurking away for years. As far as here or Mefi, my brother is on Daily Kos pretty regularly and I stay away from there just as he stays away from the blue, which is kind of too bad, because I think he'd be great on Metafilter; he's funny as hell and good with the snark.
...though it does mean that if I make a comic about how I have a headache and have taken some aspirin, I'll get several e-mails from her that are all "you need to drink some water!!!!!", but I guess that's the only drawback.
none that I'm aware of, jan. I was more referring to parents. My neurotic repressed Catholic control-freak mother would not be thrilled anout some of the things I've talked about is all.
Having once shattered my entire social network with my blog, by now I don't feel like there's any right to privacy on the internet unless you've made your weblog "invite only". If you put it on the internet, anyone who finds it has a right to read it.
I figure anyone who knows me well knows that in my old age I'm pretty much a straight arrow, for better & worse. I can't think of anything I've written that I would need to feel embarassed about. The thread I wrote on here this morning would qualify as the closest to borderline for me... relationship stuff is something I do feel very privately about. It's more personal and I hesitate to share other people's stuff that they might not want shared.
My mom reads my blog, which is now mostly knitting related but contains embarrasing college-aged entries in the archive. I don't think my dad or my SO read it, although I wouldn't mind if they did.
Both Wife and Daughter know about Mefi/Mecha, but they are not really interested. I link an occasional Mefi FPP to them, depending on which one I think will be interested.
My mom does email and sends every little animated cutesy email that has ever existed on any computer in the world, I think.
On another subject, I try to keep up with what my daughter does online but she is 17 now and probably knows more than I do about covering her tracks. For awhile I had access to her Myspace page without her knowing about it but there was really nothing untoward about what she was doing. She's pretty much on her own now.
I doubt that anyone reads my blog unless they have insomnia - it's fairly technical and mostly inaccessible to non-CS types. My mom might be happy about the vocabulary I use in it, but it would otherwise be impenetrable jargon.
My parents are in their 60s, and their Internet use doesn't extend much further than Yahoo! (games and email), the Food Network page and a few fantasy-sports sites. They know that I'm a much bigger Internet user than that, but I don't think they know any of the details.
My kids can't read and my mom dislikes computers. However, a lot of my friends/relatives know of mefi/mecha/other stuff and I am sure at some point have read. I doubt they are followers. I always write about less than I say IRL, anyway.
I can't imagine my family caring enough to read anything I wrote. Some of my friends read my blog at least occasionally. I don't know if any of my exs (the ones with whom I am not in touch, that is) are doing the cyber stalker bit. I doubt it, because my internet presence is almost entirely under the Orange Swan name, and most of the people from before a few years ago won't know anything about my alterego.
My sister might. She's a super snoop. Once, a friend of ours mentioned that she was selling something on ebay and my sister used that info to find out her seller ID, then followed a bunch of links on her About Me page to a message board where this friend was confiding that she was thinking of leaving her husband.
I think I might have mentioned once in a conversation about GoodFellas that I use the name jrossi online. I wouldn't put it past her to google it. So, HI THERE NEWSBAG! STOP SNOOPIN' ON ME!!!
My wife, my daughter, and one of my cousins know my MetaVerse persona, but I have no idea if any of them have followed the trail to my blog. I could probably find out, but even I stopped reading my blog after the first couple of days.
I have neither parents nor children. I was hatched on a Peruvian anteater farm, the result of an ill-fated relationship between a llama and the color mauve.
No kids, and I have to twist Mom's arm to check her email. Dad won't even touch the computer himself - he tells Mom what he wants to see and she does the search. They are aware that I do things online, but I'm reasonably certain that they've never looked. Even if they did, I don't think they'd learn anything they didn't already know.
My mother reads the blogs of all of her kids and kids-in-law and grandkids; she even reads my new boyfriend's blog. She gets the biggest kick out of them and yet I can't convince her to start her own.
After a bad experience showing a friend an online forum I moderated, I make it a point to not mix my real-life friends & family with my online friends. In short, she caused a little trouble... I banned her, and she went into that whole newbie-to-the-internet "you have no right, you don't own the board, I can go anywhere I want on the internet." She harrassed me so much about it I didn't want to be her friend anymore.
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