Keeping It Real?

I don't have a lot of really close friends in real life. I have quite a few people that I call "friend" but I don't know if I could open up to them and share my deepest, darkest secrets. I find it easier to open up to a bunch of strangers on the internet than I do with most of the people in my home church. I guess that might not seem so surprising to those of you raised on the internet, but I do think it is rather odd and (perhaps) a little sad.

Do any of you find it strange that so many people are able to open up and share all sorts of things in this medium? I've read things on Xanga, Blogger, and Livejournal that absolutely blew my mind. I guess that some of the things I've shared in my own internet ramblings would probably shock and offend some that know me in person. How many of us bloggers actually think about the ramifications of our posts before we hit that button and hang it out there in cyberspace? I know that some family members read things I had written in one of my other online journals and took offense at them. How did they find them? A Google search of my last name led them right to my online confessions. They couldn't believe that I had spread our family's dirty laundry out and invited the world to take a peak. In retrospect, they were absolutely right.

I've since decided that some things have no business being shared among strangers, no matter how close we may think they are. The truth is that all those buddies in our AIM lists and Xanga subscriptions really don't know us and really shouldn't know some of the things they know about us. As much as we try to keep it real and honest, I believe that most of us fictionalize some part of ourselves when we go online. I know that the person I am on my favorite forum is only a slight reflection of the person sitting at the keyboard. He's just a character based upon the real me and I guess that makes it easier to dish out all that dirt. It's his dirt, not mine. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that it's harmless until you actually hurt someone by sharing too much.

That's why this thing doesn't have any names attatched. I'm not naive enough to think that it's still 100% anonymous either. There are people out there who could spend about five minutes and STILL tell you who I am and where I'm sitting as I type this. That's the risk we all take when we log in and begin typing. That's why I have made a deliberate effort to make sure the line in the sand remains uncrossed. I admit that this is a release for me. It gives me a chance just to ramble and rant about whatever I wish but I have learned that some things need to be left unsaid.