in blogging life on the internet new media writing
This quarter’s issue of Bitch Magazine had an interesting article about Facebook and how we (or perhaps some of us?) construct our lives on it in order to impress our former classmates, work friends, and what-have-you, as part of the 21st century ‘keeping up with the Johnsons’ sort of rigmarole. For me, on Facebook at least, that’s fairly true. My Facebook is my “public face” on the internet – it’s the one that’s tied to my real name, for one thing, and it’s one of the few sites online that I don’t tie to my Livejournal, where, for the last 8 years, I’ve talked about pretty much everything in my life.
The irony of this is that, as I’m coming to the end of the museum studies certification class that I’m taking, I’m considering my options in the job market in that field and thinking that, with my background, the best way to present myself is as a new media specialist. New media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc) is the shiny new toy in the museum / non-profit field, and everybody seems to want a piece of the cake. I’ve been following the Twitter and Facebook accounts for some of my favorite of our local museums and so on as research, thinking about how my current work connects in to this…
And bemoaning my previously-mentioned openness on my 8 year-old blog over on LJ.
My blog is the place on the ‘net where I’m the most active – I write there at least a few times a week, as opposed to Twitter and Facebook which I tend to not be so active on (Facebook in particular, as there are People From Work there, and I tend not to want to get into political arguments or what-have-you with them). Facebook has pictures of me and my travels, comments about my cat, and assorted 1-sentence random notes about my life. Same with Twitter. My blog has in-depth discussions of science, feminism, movie reviews, and other important things that mean a lot to me and, I think, speak a lot more to who I am. It also has my fanfiction, and my 20 year-old self whining about class and wittering about god-only-knows-what at this point.
I have some friends who, for years, have kept separate journals for the various sides of their life – a personal journal, a writing journal, a fandom journal… and you know, I’m starting to get it. I just think it’s a bit late to start now. At least if I want to be able to show off to interested museums my clever, insightful, commentary-writing blog with (moderately) a lot of followers. :P
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at 9:16PM 03/10/10 clara said:
Good points! One of the things I always liked about LiveJournal was its complex privacy settings — so it could kind of be like two blogs, one that’s publicly accessible and one that’s private to my friends (depending on which entries I lock).
Have you considered friendslocking your more personal entries and leaving your more suitable-for-the-public entries unlocked, and then sharing the public entries in a professional context?