I've been very much myself online for 25 years, from text to video (I still mostly do text), and have sometimes been asked whether it feels weird to have complete strangers know so much about me. If it felt weird, I wouldn't do it. What I tell about myself online is not quite as open as it appears, but anything I'm "hiding" is mostly out of respect for others' privacy, not concerns about my own.
Sometimes protecting others gets me into gray areas. I'm beginning to wonder: when are the stories of my life MY stories, free for me to tell, though other people are big parts of those stories? It's interesting to see that my daughter (now legally an adult) has followed this path of openness without my really discussing it with her explicitly. She's had one weird stalker incident (turned out to be a local teenager), but not much else to feel uncomfortable about in spite of being far more appetizing a target than I am. The return for my openness is that I've made a lot of friends (and so has Ross). I have usually been comfortable with blurring the lines between my online and offline worlds - as those who came to vlogEurope last year know, I had no qualms about inviting to stay in my house a bunch of people whom I knew mostly via their videos (which, ahem, I'd hardly even watched). (If all else failed, Andreas would beat them up for me, right? <grin>) BTW, while we're on the subject: I'll be in the Bay Area from Sept 5-15 and would love to see people! In San Francisco 5th evening through 8th am, then Silicon Valley for a conference (Storage Developers - not exciting to this group, but I am being paid to film it!), then back in SFO Sept 13-15, when I leave to return to Europe. -- best regards, Deirdré Straughan living & travelling in Italy (and other Countries Beginning with I) www.beginningwithi.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
