Blogged Off
It has occured to me that blogs are problematic. I recently missed out on a job because I’d spoken about leaving the country in my blog, and the employer read that blog, and then decided that I would be unable to maintain the job while having an extended stay overseas (a little more complicated than that, the employer wasn’t doing a google search on my anything, I put my website address in my application. In addition, the job was a volunteer job, about 10-15 hours per week, all fully online, so being able to continue the work from an overseas computer was a very high possibility).
My point is this: blog’s can be a very dangerous thing. They are meant to be a space where you can speak freely without fear of persecution and have your opinion exposed to the world in a, relatively, anonymous arena. But then if we have to start worrying about people in power reading our blogs and using our comments against us, then we begin to censor ourselves. Then it’s no longer a blog, but another carefully constructed written representation of our selves. If the internet can’t provide us with this unmediated space, then what’s the point of blogging?
This has got up my nose a little, not just because of the job (that doesn’t bother me at all), but because of my newfound awareness that I can’t simply blog my heart out, I have to be very careful about the information I share. I’m a writer. Everything in my life is fair game. I hate that now I’m aware that everything in my life isn’t fair game.
James mentioned that several high-profile cases have occurred where people have been fired for what they’ve written in the blogs, so I’ve linked them below. It’s an interesting read!
Diary of a (Fired) Flight Attendant
A CNNMoney report: “Blogging is all fun and games, until the boss finds out.”