One of the nice things about having an incredibly generic first name: I blend in. While last I checked there were over thirty Jennifer Mylastname’s online and god knows I wouldn’t have been able to figure out which was me unless I knew what to look for, for the most part I don’t use my last name anywhere on my blog sites. This seems to work- well, that and I doubt I’ve said anything that controversial anywhere. I was a little nervous admitting somewhere the other day that I am taking a class in Wicca, but hell with it.

I also don’t link to anyone unless they wrote something I am linking to. I don’t do “found via XPerson’sBlog” links, because from what I have heard, those really get the traffic and make you popular. I loathe, loathe, loathe TrackBack and stat-checkers.

Hopefully this is enough to keep me off the radar of trouble. But with the Internet, you never really know.

I’m also in the position of having an unusual surname and working in an Internet-savvy field; it’s guaranteed that if I ever look for a job, they’ll Google me and find my blog. But when I started out on the net, I was doing pretty much the same thing of posting my opinions, but it was all Usenet, no news media paid any attention to it (except during Tiananmen square when Chinese students used it for organizing), it wasn’t searchable, and just about everyone was below the radar, with only a few people like Gene Spafford having enough of a Usenet presence to be even limited public figures. I remember someone posting to Usenet about her husband’s drunken arrival home, getting (among the suggestions to attend Al Anon) a guy chewing her out for publically shaming her husband, and her response was, it’s just Usenet, and no one who knows us will ever see it.

Publicity can certainly creep up on you. Sometimes I’m relieved that I’m more of a C-list blogger, especially when it comes to the posts that touch on my sex life. And if those posts involved a sex life like Thomas’, rather than the more usual thing of simply not having still been a virgin when I married, I would never have dared blog them under my real name.

My $0.02.

For example, already anyone who googles my real name can find that I am a feminist, that I have had two letters published in a left-wing newspaper, that I graduated from an Oxbridge university, that I used to write poetry, even that I once left a comment in a museum guestbook in France which was quoted in a random person’s PhD thesis… and I never intended for any of that information to be out there and set about making it public. It just IS, whether I like it or not. In fact, only in two cases (the letters in the paper) was I even aware that I was posting anything for publication at all. So I’ve started to be a little more careful about what information I make publically available, especially on my blog. And even as I’m typing this, I’m aware that I’ve made yet another link between information about the real-name-me and information about thegirlfrommarz-me (and thegirlfrommarz is a name I use all over teh Internets). It’s sad to have to think like that, but I do - and what happened to Amanda and Melissa gave me one more reason to think twice before posting.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to work for or with anyone who hadn’t read my blog, or who was offended by its contents. So if my anonymity is compromised, it’s no big deal. But on the other hand, I have long been fearful of the kind of hoo-ha that Amanda and Melissa experienced. I have no political ambitions, but I still find myself engaged in occasional self-censorship even under cover of a pseudonym.

And I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to have my blog read and used as evidence for (more likely against) my suitability as a parent (not that I have any children, but you know what I mean). Bless your heart, Lauren — what an awful experience.