Welcome to the Jungle…

We got fun 'n' games
We got everything you want
Honey we know the names --

(lyrics by Guns N' Roses)

Three meditations on being a deliberately private person with a public voice in a digital world...

First, the tale of Armando, now formerly a front-page star of dKos...

Blogging Anonymity
by Armando
Wed Jun 07, 2006 at 07:18:43 PM PDT
A major Right wing site has chosen to support a troll's campaign started at this site to out me.

The writing is on the wall. I will likely be giving up blogging as a result.

If people were wondering about why I was so adamant about this, I hope this explains it.

I have never written about my clients and whenever I had a conflict, I disclosed it. But people of ill will have no decency or limits.

If I sound bitter, it is because I am quite bitter about this.

So, this is probably so long kossacks and bloggers. I fade away.

The comment section of this post (and other sites reacting to it) was sprinkled -- liberally (pun intended) -- with what-I-will-assumed were well-intended remarks about being outed. About it “not being so bad”, or for the best, or that “congruence” was “liberating”.

This had a distinctly evangelical, ex-smoker tinge to it, and became a weirdly detached conversation since as far as I can tell, Armando’s situation had nothing to do with his intimate/personal life.

Or as commenter Jonathan clarified:

As I understand it, the gist of NR's "gotcha" is that Armando posted material defending corporations without disclosing that he's a corporate attorney. Even if all of that is true, frankly, I care much more about whether Armando's points stand on their own.

See, sometimes it isn’t all about you and, no, I do NOT want to take five minutes so you can talk to me about your new best friend Jebus.

Elsewhere, more on-topic, a gentleman implied that maybe Armando would be happier with a different job anyway, which smacks of a kind of Liberal cringing that I despise.

I'm all for looking on the bright side, but emphatically not for turning almost reflexively away from the people who just socked you in the throat and immediately shifting into some peculiar rationalization that maybe getting socked in the throat is a...good thing.

“I mean, you didn’t really need that puppy anyway. And it's probably for the best that the house burned down because, well, it was a bitch to keep those hardwood floors clean, right?”

This is, I suppose, a Liberal version of the “God has a Great Purpose that you and I cannot understand” response to tragedy or injustice. Which is OK, but I kinda think that maybe God’s Plan involves us getting highly pissed off at being fucked with and doing something about it.

But that’s just how my Savior rolls...


Second comes Sci-Sci-Science! And an interesting take on the pros and cons of living with a foot in both the digital and analog worlds.

Anonymity, openness, safety, and responsibility.

Category: Blogospheric science • Communication • Current events • Women and science
Posted on: June 8, 2006 1:50 PM, by Janet D. Stemwedel

This week, the National Review Online's media blogger revealed the secret identity of dKos blogger Armando, who says that this unwanted decloaking probably means he will no longer blog.

While I'm not heavy into the political end of the blogosphere (until someone can provide me with more than 24 hours per day), Armando's story resonates with me because one of my favorite science bloggers, BotanicalGirl, had to stop blogging when members of her department became aware of her blog. So I've been thinking a lot about blogging anonymously versus blogging under one's own name, not just in terms of the costs and benefits for the blogger, but also in terms of what the readers are getting out of (or reading into) the blog.

First, it should be obvious to readers that I am blogging under my own name (for who would make up a name like "Stemwedel"?) and, for that matter, my own face. My day job at San Jose State University isn't a secret. I'm rather more guarded with details about my family, but that's because this is my blog, where I express my views; my family members shouldn't be held responsible for those views.

...
So, I entered blogging with the idea that anything I posted was something I'd have to be ready to stand behind, not only in cyberspace but also in the three-dimensional world.

At the same time, I completely understand the desire of other bloggers to keep their real-life identities secret. Some of them work for organizations that are much more conscious of the effects that conversations about certain controversial issues (about politics, policy, etc.) might have on clients or funders. Some of them prefer to have impermeable walls between their work lives and their blogging activities.

Some of them are blogging about intensely personal issues -- issues which may include stuff going on in their work lives.

In other words, for many who blog anonymously, blogging under real names could have bad consequences for an employer, for the blogger in his/her capacity as an employee, or for the blogger in his/her personal life.

But if my Law and Order induced paranoia is right, and there is a real possibility that these bloggers could be outed, wouldn't it be better if anonymous bloggers just stopped blogging?

My general answer to this is a resounding, NO!, though I suppose there might be particular instances in which the risks are great enough that a prudent blogger would have to pull the plug.
…

And, lastly, this story of a rude awakening from the NYT.

June 11, 2006
Online Remark Can Now Sink Job Candidate
By ALAN FINDER
When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois.

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.
"A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?" said the company's president, Brad Karsh. "Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?"

Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job. But now, college career counselors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.

When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, such pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best.

"It's a growing phenomenon," said Michael Sciola, director of the career resource center at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. "There are lots of employers that Google. Now they've taken the next step."

...
Concerns have already been raised about these and other Internet sites, from their potential misuse by stalkers to students exposing their own misbehavior, for example by posting photographs of hazing by college sports teams. Add to the list of unintended consequences the new hurdles for the job search.

...
A friend suggested in February that Mr. Nguyen research himself on Google. He found a link to a satirical essay, entitled "Lying Your Way to the Top," that he had published last summer on a Web site for college students. He asked that the essay be removed. Soon, he began to be invited to job interviews and has now received several offers.

"I never really considered that employers would do something like that," he said. "I thought they would just look at your résumé and grades."

...
Melanie Deitch, director of marketing at Facebook, agreed, saying students should take advantage of the site's privacy settings and should be smart about what they post.

But it is not clear whether many students are following the advice. "I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult world doesn't know about it," said Mark W. Smith, assistant vice chancellor and director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. "But the adult world is starting to come in."

At a gig I worked some years ago at a fairly profitable shop, the Big Squeeze came shortly after we were acquired by a cabal of white, Christian good-‘ol-boys from People’s Republic of Texas.

Even though the bottom line was sound, there immediately came a round of purges and job “reclassifications” that were very clearly calibrated to get rid of as many women and minorities as possible, and make sure all the survivors had to effectively double their workload without complaint or compensation, or be sacked.

In case you’ve spent the days of your life in an “Altered States” isolation tank – and therefore have also spent your nights gamboling through your local zoo, hunting gazelle – even in this Year of our Lord 2006, there are still a staggering number of men – mostly men – in senior management who believe that their employees are their property, to be berated, groped, elevated and disposed of at a whim.

Who believe in their shabby break-room-after-hours rights of “droit du seigneur” and “jus primae noctis” as fiercely as any medieval Lord.

Add in that smugly-grinning-pervert-Jim Bakker-ish dogma of White Male Fundamentalist Privilege and the results are especially revolting.

And ain’t it just great that these Anointed Ones run the country now!

Anyway, there was a pretty clear line of demarcation when it came to the reaction of us worker bees. Needless to say everyone was pissed and dismayed and sickened that this particular disease had infected our relatively-happy little isle, but for those of who had stocked up a certain number of professional years, this came as no big surprise; for those who had not, it shocked the Hell out of them.

“B-b-but they can’t do that! You can’t just fire someone for no reason at all!”

Oh little darlin’, how it saddened me to see you reach that moment of bitter realization about how the Real World really works.

To see something charming and tender die in your eyes when you were forced to confront the fact that, often, the Bad Guys win, and all of your eloquence, logic and undeniable rightness makes as righteous a sword-and-shield combo when pitted against pinstrip Neanderthals with power as an icicle and a wad of Kleenex in a blast furnace.

But the trick is not to abandon your heart. Don’t turn your back on your ideals.

No, quite the opposite: realize that your ideals are not laws of physics that need no cops and courts because they cannot be broken (“Sir please put down the Perpetual Motion machine and step away from the Laws of Thermodynamics!”), or some endowment from God that can’t be smacked right out of your hands and regifted into the corporate shredder by thugs with money and clout.

Instead they are values and principles that are constantly under siege by people who believe that money or skin color or political party or faith renders them above such petty considerations.

It is a blessing to have been taught that tolerance, respect, civil rights and privacy are basic virtues, but you was robbed, darlin’, if you were told that you would enjoy these things forever at no cost and without struggle.

The world is full of busy men with money and power working every day to strip-mine those values off the face of the Earth and replace them with a tidy, Flag-and-Bible-driven Corporate Christian state free of any vestigial traces of genuine democracy.

And oh my yes, they will fuck with you. For their own reasons or for no reason at all, your life will be tampered with, prodded and scarred by people who are running an agenda that is loathsome to you, and antithetical to every value your parents taught you to adore.

And sometimes they win. Outright. And no cavalry shows up in the third reel to save the fort.

I hate to break it to you kid, but we’re the cavalry.

Just you and me.

And the loons who have traded their Canadian money back for Yankee dollars to donate to the cash-strapped casinos at Yearly Kos. And the Atriots. And the Soccer Brigades who have temporarily taken over Steve and Jen’s place. And the ramblers at Shakepeare’s Sis. And all the rest of the troublemakers, too numerous to mention.

And millions and millions and millions of others.

As a friend used to tell me back when my flesh was more tender than it is now, “Remember, in the end there is no justice. There’s just us.”

The good news is, like it or not, from drowned polar bears to footprints on the Moon, the world really is what we make it. But if we want it to be a safe harbor for tolerance, respect, civil rights and privacy, then we have to hew that shape into our national bedrock and keep dredging the mud out, in spite of fear and failure.

The better news is, most of the hard work has already been done by the generations and legions of patriots and anonymous citizens, veterans and school teachers, working folks, pamphleteers and protesters that preceded us. We’re just the swing shift, kiddo: newbies clocking in on a job that great men and women began long, long ago.

So don’t be afraid to pick whatever tiny corner of the banner you can lift and help the friends of liberty to carry it forward -- even just a little -- but for goodness sake remember that you’re in a for-real fight in a digital age.

And while that affords you unprecedented opportunities to connect with and contribute to the great, national questions of our times (or show the world your ass, or bitch about your boss, or talk about how hammered you got last night), it also means you must carefully choose how close to the spotlight you wish to stand and what you wish to share.

Because in a for-real fight, the second-most important rule is always this:

Protect yourself in the clinches.