The World is Quiet Here

Guys, I have a Dreamwidth now, also Noachoc. I'm posting this from there as a sort of mic test. As of now I don't really have any plans one way or another, to stay on Livejournal and keep DW as a backup or to migrate to DW and crosspost or to migrate to DW and not crosspost, but if you have a DW, add me there.

So, this is what's up. About a year ago I wrote something about a girl I used to know and, basically, I said I found her vaguely irritating. I swear, that's all I said, "This Girl vaguely irritated me in high-school and still, now and then, manages to vaguely irritate me from a distance. I'd rather she not be elected to public office, although such a scenario would be far in the future."

Because she was the sort of person to Google herself (and, to be fair, how many of us haven't at one point or another?) and because I was stupid enough to use her last name, she found it. She was, somewhat understandably, a bit annoyed.

These things happen and they are, after the first year or so of having a internet journal, the sorts of things we EXPECT to happen every now and then.

What I didn't expect was that she would threaten legal action. The email she sent was very polite and friendly ("Hi, I hope things have been going well with you. I found your blog and was upset") until she threw in that she was going to sue me if I didn't remove the "sick and hate-filled" post.

I got scared. I went through and took out her last name anywhere that it appeared and then made the post (and the subsequent ones, where I was being SEVERELY irritated by her) friends-only. At the time it was highly time-consuming to make one's entire journal friends-only, so I toyed with the idea before eventually discarding it. After all, my great delight in internet journaling is that it allows me to make friends with strangers. This is something I'm very bad at in real life and, as much as I love the way live-journal enables me to keep in touch with friends from long ago, I love it more because it's given me such wonderful friends I've never seen in places I'll probably never visit. I got to meet two of them this past year, and it made me so HAPPY.

Anyway, about a week ago, a friend of mine posted something on HIS internet journal about an internship he'd been offered, and how he wasn't sure whether or not he was really into that sort of thing but would probably take it anyway unless he found something better. But apparently the people who had offered him the internship found his journal and threw a fit, and ALSO sent a copy to one of his professors, who ALSO threw a fit. The way I hear it, a half-joking journal entry somehow managed to jeopardize his entire future.

It got me to thinking about how people suck, and about how free-speech isn't as free if you write it down where anyone who looks hard enough can find it. Collumnists can write their opinions in newspapers without repurcussions (for the most part, anyway, seems to be different rules if those opinions are racist), but it seems we can't write what we happen to be thinking on the internet without worrying that we'll be fired or blacklisted or sued. And I'm not talking about strong sentiments like "I wish so-and-so were dead" or "This internship is absolutely worthless and I plan to use the money to buy heroin," but little piddly shit, like "This person sort-of gets on my nerves" or "I think I might take the job because it's in Taiwan and I've always wanted to go to Taiwan, not because I particularly like the company."

I don't see why someone can make such ill-mannered comments about the President or the Speaker of the House, and I can't say that this girl I knew in high-school happened to annoy me.

But I don't make the rules; I'm just fed up with them.

So I'm going into hiding, at least partially. Maybe I won't friends-only my dreams, or the dresses I want from Neiman Marcus (but will never be able to afford), and will just keep private anything that's real. Maybe I'll leave the entry of the day public, and friends-only it 24 hours later. I haven't really figured that out yet.

The point being, though, that I still love it when strangers approach me. So, if you happen to have come here because you thought I said something interesting in a lj-community, or because you think my icon is funny, or because you think you might have known me once, just comment here, or email me, and I'll see what I can do about getting you access.

Otherwise, well... that's it.