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Monday, March 1, 2010

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Since entering this bloggers' subculture I have anonymously and unashamadly peeped into the private lives of people across the globe. These are people who express themselves with fine writing, humour and creativity. Most of them are brave souls who state their names, post pictures of their families and give the impression that their life is an open book with nothing to hide.

It shames me to take refuge behind a Purple Cow. Not very brave, is it? Yet my writing would definitely be inhibited if I were to freely reveal inconsequential details about myself such as name, rank, serial number. No full name or picture for me! Just a gushing of views for the perusal of  strangers. Something like a diary, but with feedback... Or as fellow blogger Robin calls it "blog therapy" given at "A Daily Dose" at a time...

The ancients would meet at the central agora and philosophise. These days we have inter-blog communication. Screens full of thoughts and musings interacting between themselves, inspired by one another. Oftentimes I wonder if we even realise that this is what we are doing.

I wonder how people feel when I jot down my thoughts regarding their private lives in their comment boxes - another rude and irresistible compulsion that I find just as fun as blogging itself.

Were I to have a name and a picture, I don't think I would do this. I'd be too worried of being slapped with a libel suit. I shudder at the thought of my colleagues getting a hold of this and using my very words against me (heaven forbid they realise what a sensitive insensitive person I am deep down). Scarier still, imagine a stalker or a paedophile showing up on your doorstep or someone parading your pictures on other sites and wreaking havoc in your life as has been done on FB! Hundreds of worst case scenarios come to mind...

Blogging does make you vulnerable even when anonymously done. It exposes you.

So while I remain anonymous imagine me any way you want... Ugly, beautiful, bland, fat, thin, wrinkly, casual or formal, long-haired, short-haired, bald, cross-eyed... But know one thing - if you read this, chances are you probably know me better than those who are privy to the boring stuff.

So, dear friends and strangers, strange friends and friendly strangers and cyber world at large, have a nice day, week, month, life...

Kisses to ya. :)

5 comments:

LJ said...

I, for one, am delighted that you "peeped" in on me AND left a lovely comment. Can one peep and comment???

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the name of your blog, and if its alight - I'd like to add you to my blog roll.

How did you find me?

LJ said...

P.S. I meant the Purple Cow bit

Michael- said...

Hey, look at it this way, at least you are engaging the world.. A lot more than most people are doing.

cheers~

Robin said...

Of course I have a million thoughts.... the first one was, "Does she know I wrote a blog with the same title? How funny is that????" The second was how thrilled I was to get a personal mention (oooh blushing). The third was aggravation because I still can't figure out how to change the color of my words within a piece. Drats blogger. And, lastly, maybe someday you will feel confident enough to reveal your first name. Greece is a pretty big place. You can still leave the cow picture up there. I think we live life in baby steps with regard to certain things. I'd hate to have to start calling you Purple. Or Cow. Cow would be bad. And there's your daily dose, but I'd still like you to stop by my blog for today's installment.

xo
Robin (That wasn't so bad)

moleculeColony said...

Well, I'm moleculeColony since I'm a colony of molecules, and funnily enough I seem to be the first person on earth who noticed this (at least the first person who used that word on the internet). Funny. But I understand there are only few names of that magnitude, and in the moment it's not much more than a stimulus for my awareness, but the plan would be to become conscious of it more and more, and eventually one day use it in a practical way. (Especially in the realm of health, by influencing my body, but probably also when it comes to higher investigation of the cosmos, and maybe it's also a means to connect to other people, more internally than the usual telepathic moments on the cell level.)

And you are a Purple Cow? Well, the color purple sounds extravagant to me, also paradoxical (red + blue, the two extremes of the spectrum), and kind of hallucinogenic, and the cow, I don't know, isn't it something motherly and nourishing, milky, with silent passive eyes?

It's always very interesting to think about the names people choose to build their identity on the internet, unfortunately many of them aren't creative enough to go beyond their real names, if you sometimes come across a place where they talk about the meaning of names or are doing something like a survey about this topic please let me know.