Wednesday, March 3, 2004

The Freedom to Be Yourself In Public

(NB: Post from 2004)

Cory Doctorow posts a couple observations that resonate with me in a comment to danah's post on homophily and blogging:

1. The Internet is full of weird people. Like science fiction, technology and RPGs, the Internet since its earliest days has attracted people who didn't fit in with the local norm, who sought community online -- the alt. heirarchy is like a roadmap of locally socially unacceptable hobbies, practices and beliefs that migrated to the net. This has its pluses and its minuses, but the net always framed itself as a place where you could come and woo your muse of the odd with other oddfellows, so no surprise, really, that it's full of people facing inwards, talking about their own heterodoxy.

2. The Internet makes you weird. The ability to browse all the possible kinks, find the ones that tickles your pink, and dive in, free from socially normative disapprobation, is a fast ticket to becoming One Of Us. No one is *really* a "mundane," but many people button themselves up and pass -- even to themselves. The net's seductive lure is to join the kink SIG that corresponds to your inner Imp of the Perverse and shut out everyone who would have you know that you're a perv for being *really* into, you know, rubber or chess or Klingons.

I recall conversing with Tom Munnecke on how one can view blogging as a personal "coming out" experience, going public with what was once private. And I think this process that many people are undergoing has the effect of speeding up the change and diversification of overt personal practices and social norms. While this might be scary to some, in my view it is a good thing, as it allows us to
  • be aware of how many others are different from, and similar to us;
  • be less afraid of behaving in ways that are closer to who we really are; and
  • make meaningful connections with strangers that we would otherwise have never found out about.
Coming to terms with who we are is crucial to well-being, and though it might not be necessary, I have no doubt that speaking out can be helpful - for more on that see "Using a blog for self-help?".

[Update: Just found this post by Andrew Chen which seems related. In it he states that "normal" people will probably never blog. Which makes me wonder if normality is the same as conformity...]