to be seen or unseen?

I was pondering blogging. More specifically, the visual portion of blogging.

When I first started using the internet (back when the Earth was cooling), you only got to know people through their words. Those ancient bulletin boards barely supported formatted text, let alone graphics or user photos. The only thing you could glean about a person was by deciphering their user name. Even when Prodigy and AOL first hit the scene, your first impression of someone was their email address. If CUTIEPIE4YOU posted, you could easily suss out her focus. But if AMARIEM posted (that was me), it was all very ambiguous until the emails really started flowing.

With MySpace, Facebook, et al, it’s pretty much the How Ho Can You Go school of representation.

I choose not to use a real photo for my blogging life, but then somebody said to me the other day “You can always tell the ugly chicks when they don’t use a real photo.”

Err, wha?? I aint no damn ugly chick!

In the several years I’ve been online, I’ve met some freaky-ass people. Super crazy stalker people. As a result, I don’t publicly post any personal details about myself. True, it’s not like any of the super crazy stalker people I inadvertently befriended ever showed up on my doorstep, and I’ve met far more normal, lovely people than crazy harpies, but I find it’s just better to keep the personal stuff between friends. Nor do I feel the need to publicly share all the details of my daily life (mostly because you can’t ever take it back once it’s in print!)

I just found his comment amusing, though. It did come from a younger person who wasn’t around when the Earth was cooling, so I suppose the “if you don’t post who you really are, you must be a hermaphrodite with three eyes” mentality is just part of the evolution (for good or bad) of internet life.

When I objected to this attitude, I received the following response: “But you should post a photo of yourself. You actually look good for your age.”

To which I responded: “Oh thanks! That’s so nice of—wait…what do you mean for my age??”

My only consolation is that he will likely have much less hair and much more beer gut by the time he’s this age!