Intention to Write More Diaries

I think I'm going to experiment more with using this space as a diary.

One of those ole internet canards is you should never share too much about yourself because of the Dangerous People; and that's deep in our habitmaking somewhere. For this reason, I'm more likely to know that a person I follow is a biracial PTSD demiboy who is pro-Mao and anti-incest than I am, say, to know about what they do in their day and how they feel and what their hobbies are. It's almost as if...there is a different set of rules for internet intimacy.

One might assume that disclosing your marginalised identities and political convictions were actually pretty private, some of the most trusting information - - the kinds of thing a stranger in real life would generally NOT know about you. But online that tends to be reversed. What school you're at and how studies are going and bringing the things of offline life into this sphere is the big taboo. It's boomerposting to be sharing bits of your life in that way.

Is it bad? I think it might be bad. Because those details are some of the highest stake things about you, the things most likely to lead to terror and rage around others: there's a reason why these things are, traditionally, kept private. In contrast, it's quite hard to start a provocative discourse around the dopey things of my small day. You get so used to people's internet presences which are All Discourse All The Time that you stop thinking it's weird, but it IS weird; and it's bigger, systemic problem how hard it is to wrest back control of the internet as a tool you can use to extend your life (writing about your day, books, your hobbies) instead of being pulled into these particular patterns of relating. Like, the amount of follows you get for updating people with what you're reading vs being in YA discourse hell motivates one over the other.

& i think it's grounding; as I move into this next phase of Fen things (I'm considering going out on the big wide internet again), there's something about posting more about ordinary life which is a buffer against becoming some kind of lifestyle influencer or personal advertising brand, like, making good on what I want people to believe about my work - which is that it is simply a record of what I'm doing, my personal work, that I'm sharing because I have had so much value from what others have freely shared. Part of making that so is refusing the persona of leadership or, the persona of competence or being a provider or being the embodiment of what I do (as tempting as that last one often is) & and like, hoping that attracts the right people. What I do is not for everybody, & what I want is 30 good followers not 30k anonymous ones; I want peers and friends I know interpersonally and learn from in turn, not a customer base. There's just no pleasure to me in that much attention, and a significant amount of pleasure in being unseen.