shielded in my armor

Last August, while looking at a guide to Hong Kong blogs, I found a new blog listed. The author of "The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn..." claimed to be "a nuckin futs Manc girl" who liked to post pics of "muscular men in period costume". This reminded me of one of my old HK classmates who hailed from Manchester. She idolized Aaron Kwok, the Cantopop singer whose concert costumes could come from Elton John's closet. So I decided to click and view the blog. Holy cow! After reading it, I would bet dollars to donuts that it was my old Mancunian classmate's blog. There were several mentions of her job teaching English to young Cantonese children. The blogroll prominently highlighted a Manchester newspaper, a dissident Manchester soccer team -- and an Aaron Kwok fansite that I know she started. Even the domain name of the blog, soup-dragon, could be a play on her pseudonym from class, Tong Siu-je. (The Cantonese word for soup is "tōng".) While I definitely enjoyed reading her blog, I was shocked at how easy it was to connect this supposedly anonymous blogger to a person I once shared fish balls in brown sauce with.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I believed that, unlike her, my blog was much more anonymous. You won't find any mention of my favorite sports teams, political party affiliation, or theological beliefs here. I refuse to pinpoint exactly where I'm living, except to say it's an area outside of Rochester that has plenty of open space. There's no links to web pages I've once posted, no blogroll filled with links to friends' blogs or Myspace pages. I've kept any career-related matters off this page as well. I thought it impossible for someone to find me via my blog. And yet, last Friday, someone was able to do so!


So now I'm starting to think about the idea of privacy, especially privacy and anonymity on the Internet. It's not that I'm doing anything illegal or shameful here! But who'd want someone you've chatted up on a dating site show up unannounced at your house? Would you really want a potential client or coworker to find your posts on a fan site stating how much you're rooting for Pam Beesley and Jim Halpert from The Office to get together? These are the sorts of scenarios I envisioned when I decided to keep my online persona separated -- like an island -- from my daily, offline life.

And yet being found out wasn't an egregious experience. Sure, my initial feeling was shock that someone was able to find this blog by Googling my real name. And my first reaction was to comb thru this blog and make it even better shielded from outsiders. But it's not like being "found out" was unpleasant in the slightest. The person who found me was a classmate from high school. We had a lot of enjoyable discussions in high school and during college breaks. It was wonderful to find out where he ended up and what's he's doing with his life. I'd like to think he also enjoyed reading about the strange path my life has taken in the past few years. If this blog can put a smile on the faces of people I've never thought would read this blog, then perhaps a little loss of anonymity isn't such a bad thing.