My private public life.

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The anonymity of the internet supposedly offers us the ability to on the one hand expose ourselves, while on the other to remain very distant, unattainable. My brother in law has, for instance, collected what he calls masks, examples of exhibitionists who seem more than willing to display their bodies on the web, but choose to mask their faces through various digital methods.

And this suggests a general trend - a willingness to tell almost everything about ourselves as long as we maintain a strict separation between our online and our offline identities. This suggests that the important point isn't necessarily that we're different people on the web, but that different people know about us. Or in other words: Do we really want our mothers reading our web sites? About half a year ago I linked to this wonderful spoof from The Onion. Since then the article has either been archived or removed from the Onion site, but a number of people who apparently liked it as much as I did saved and posted copies. So today, Mom Finds Out About Blog can be found here, and here.

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Go to: Mother Night on the web.