Self-Indulgence

This isn't a post about "Anonymous", the 4chan meme (although that is a fascinating story, so maybe I'll have to do that some other time)*. I want to write something now about being anonymous. I've been thinking about blog anonymity a lot lately, but I'm still really uncertain about it. Maybe writing will help me make up my mind. Maybe you can help me out in the comments.

First: I started a blog a while ago. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it, but I thought it would be good opportunity (and excuse) to force myself to practise different ways of writing. Which is what it's actually been, more or less, I think. I posted as "Thoapsl" because in my mind, that stood for "think of a pseudonym later". (Yeah, I know, I know...)

BUT. As of Wednesday, I'm no longer anonymous: my blog now carries my actual name. So? Even before, it was possible for people to figure out my identity if they tried hard enough. But I'd always had a vague paranoia that without anonymity, I was more vulnerable; that I couldn't post anything without fear of it haunting me irl. Anonymity meant the freedom to relax.

That's what I thought my motivation was. But in fact I've always cared about what I post, anyway, whether anonymous or not. Thoapsl's reputation isn't my reputation, but it's a reputation that I care about. I've even gone out of my way not to swear online, mostly, despite the fact that my natural inclination is to swear like a m*therf*ck**g c**tf*xed tro**er.

So if it's not really about freedom, what's my real paranoia? Am I maybe worried about potential employers not hiring me, because of something on my blog that they don't like?

I know I'm definitely conflicted about angling for employment via my blog. I want my personal blogging to be for fun and random – I don't want to feel constrained by purpose. I definitely don't want to seem mercenary. But if someone actually emailed me tomorrow and said "Hey Tim, I read your blog and I would like to give you money for something" – that would be great, wouldn't it? And if there's nothing on my blog that would actually lose me a job – at least, any job worth having – then what's the worst that could happen?

Maybe I've talked myself into it. Maybe I'm still unsure. Either way I probably need to work on my blogger profile some more. (Maybe I'm just embarrassed that I don't have a real "occupation" to fill in on my profile, yet.)

Is anonymity worth it? Do you care about it, yourself? Would you (or do you?) blog anonymously, or under your real name? Best answer wins a prize.

*Hey, wait a minute! I just noticed, I am totally jumping on the mentioning-4chan-but-then-not-actually-talking-about-it-although-still-leaving-open-the-possibility-of-talking-about-it-later bandwagon. What a weird coincidence. Hat-tip to Carla!

I'm Like A Bird

I've resisted joining Twitter for a long time because, you know, Twitter? Only journalists, nerds and stupid celebrities (and their stalkers) use Twitter, everybody knows that! It's just a wank, right? Worse than blogging, even. Forget about it.

That would probably be a dumb and unfair exaggeration, but that doesn't mean it's not a common reaction. It seems that because Twitter has gone from what? to it's everywhere! with such speed, a lot of people I know already feel that it's just not cool anymore. Of course back when it was cool, hardly anyone was using it, so there was little point in signing up. But now that it's been aggressively colonised by mainstream celebrities, it's just tragically unhip.

It's the same thing that happened to Facebook after your mum and dad joined. The difference is that Facebook, unlike Twitter, enjoyed a good year or so (i.e. 2007) dominated by twentysomethings – the parents and bosses didn't make it over until more recently.

If you were born in the 1980s, you and your friends joined Facebook around 2007–08, right? That was the crucial year-without-parents that entrenched Facebook's social essentiality. And even if you've now changed your mind, even if you now openly despise Facebook, now it's too late! Because if you quit tomorrow, how will you get invited to parties? How will you flirt? How will you play Scrabble? Facebook today is like a mobile phone: it's so culturally pervasive that it's more of a hassle to avoid than it is to play along.

Twitter hasn't had Facebook's luxury of incubated hipster coolness. It has had a huge amount of press coverage and good buzz, but I have a weird suspicion that this might be due to two unusual factors:

1. Twitter is excellent for journalists. It's a 21st-century evolution of the wire service, perfect for concise bulletins and constant updates. And if a whole bunch of journalists are suddenly using a new technology, it makes sense they're going to be interested enough to write a whole bunch of articles about it – even if these journalists are actually an unusual minority, compared to everyone else.*

2. Ashton Kutcher.

Of course, I could well be wrong about this. I live in a social bubble of my own. Most people I know don't really dig Twitter, but "most people I know" is not a meaningful demographic – everything I've said here could easily be way off. And yet, recent data indicates that I might be right: it turns out that most Twitter users are older professionals, while twentysomethings are definitely in the minority. But is this the way Twitter is going to stay, or will the demographic suddenly broaden after it passes the tipping point (as recently happened with Facebook)? And so what if it does, and so what if it doesn't?

Anyhow. My point: I joined Twitter this afternoon. Why?

Because yesterday, my housemate joined. Which meant that I suddenly had a total of two close friends on Twitter. If that's all it takes to convince me to join, maybe Twitter really is the future. I honestly don't know.

Answer me, people: is Twitter cool?

And, either way: so what?

*This is only a hypothesis, unfortunately: I've been able to find some data on Twitter demographics, but nothing that talks quantitatively about journalists. So this hunch of mine may be, in fact, complete crap.

Money Money Money Money Money

Crikey pointed out this interesting article by Lars Bastholm* about the money troubles possibly looming for the content industry – "content industry" being Bastholm's neat term for the mass of commercial media on the net (press websites, TV streaming, etc). Wait, money troubles? What?

Although the content industrialists have been hoping to support their online content via online advertising, Bastholm says this might not actually work. But if online ads aren't worth enough, where does money come from? There's two big ideas: micropayments, where people pay a miniscule amount of money every time they access content, or a subscription / licence fee model, where people a larger amount of money at regular intervals.

Bastholm's big argument is that "micropayments will never work", because Gen Y aren't willing to pay for anything. I think he's wrong, though. The whole point of micropayments is that the payments are tiny and invisible, and that's the key. There's a real psychological difference between spending $10 all at once and spending it in $0.0001 increments, the same as there's a difference between eating a whole cake at once versus eating it slice-by-slice. People don't like paying $150 for a dictionary, but paying a fraction of a cent for every definition you look up? Much easier to swallow.

If the prices are low enough and the mechanism makes it easy for you, people will pay rather than pirate. Even Gen Y kids will pay – isn't iTunes the proof? Most people are willing to spend (a little) money for legality and convenience. People bought a Nine Inch Nails album via iTunes, even though it was available free & legal via nin.com!

Anyhow – Bastholm wants to abandon paying for individual websites, and instead to implement a "content fee" similar to the television licences paid in Europe and elsewhere: one unavoidable payment to cover everything, like a tax. He admits that Americans, notoriously tax-phobic, are unlikely to accept a new fee to access what's now free. Yet he envisions every American paying an extra $20 a month or so, which is then distributed to the content producers via some kind of $$-per-popularity formula.

That might be a fair model, but wouldn't it be incredibly complicated? Not to mention, impossible to work across the net's (lack of) international borders? Or will the web of USA content just wall itself off from the rest of the world? (This might already be happening – I'm constantly pissed off that I can't watch television via Hulu, for example.)

I don't think a licence fee is practical. And mini-licence fees for each website (or network of sites) are already unpopular – people hate subscribing to websites! That might change if the big sites make it unavoidable... but I'm not convinced.

Micropayments are easier for websites to implement and easier for people to accept, I think. If the money has to come from somewhere, I'm definitely expecting micropayments.

Would you pay $20 a month for all your web content?

Would you rather pay a fraction of a cent per webpage view?

What's going to happen?

*LARS BASTHOLM: Lars the Red, Blood-Lord of the Ice Wastes of Fangthor, Chief Digital Creative Officer at Ogilvy North America.

Molly Ringwald's Fault

A lot of John Hughes films were about the consequences of attention, or the lack of it: trying to get the attention of someone you like, what happens when parents don't pay attention to you, what it's like to be lonely and misunderstood. Blogging is all about attention, too – the blogosphere is like a 1980s high school movie where popularity is everything. Or, let's be more specific: your problem is that your (allegedly) wonderful personality is useless and irrelevant, until you can get your hot crush to notice you. Once you've been noticed, a happy ending is inevitable. Either your hot crush (i.e. internet audience) likes you too, or else you realise that you never really wanted them after all, and you end up with your best friend instead. (The internet is not your best friend.)

I got to thinking about this after I followed a link from here to here – a blog post by a woman who was became John Hughes' pen-pal after writing him a fan letter. (Seriously, go read it.) It's a genuinely touching post. But what struck me, looking at the rest of her blog, is how she's now gone from having practically no readers (3 comments on one post, 0 comments on the next post, 2 comments on the next, etc) to suddenly having 1000+ comments – which implies a readership of, say, presumably 10,000+? I know this is not a bad thing – the blogger in question is obviously sincere, it would be massively unfair to suggest otherwise* – but I can't help feeling weirdly uncomfortable about the implications.

Attention-seeking behaviour doesn't have to be nice to be successful. What are you willing to do in order to get attention (on the internet)?

• Will you lie about who you are?

• Will you say something controversial, even if you don't entirely believe it?

• Will you insult somebody?

• Will you post pictures of yourself naked?

• Will you promise something?

Here's my promise: if everyone in class comments on this post, I will bake you a cake.

On the other hand... are readers the purpose of blogging, or are they irrelevant? Plenty of people blog on despite only single-figure readerships (e.g.) – but do they care? Does it matter? Without readers, are they wasting their time? Presumably they're getting something out of it themselves, or they wouldn't continue. I guess the real question is: are these blogs readerless because they're no good, or because they're not trying hard enough to get attention? (Whether an audience matters either way is a different question, I think.) It's possible to regularly read dozens or hundreds of other people's blogs, so it must be possible for every single blogger to have dozens or hundreds of regular readers. Why don't they?

What aren't they willing to do?

*Although that hasn't stopped some people, apparently.

Get Confident, Stupid

Mistakes? No mistakes here, honest. I'm using "Mistakes Being Marked" as a blog title because it's a convenient match to the name of the other place where I put things on the internet. Look, I ain't no mistake-obsessed pessimist, okay? If my confidence level were an advertisement for shirts in 1948, it'd be this:

Ready for a bright new day!

(Image from here.)

Actually, this might be relevant to the course: can anyone tell me how copyright and "fair use" work? By which I mean, if I grab an image from somewhere (as I've done above), and I simply acknowledge that the image's copyright is theirs and that I'm borrowing it from them, is this "acknowledgment" enough? I mean, should I be worrying about licensing and legal permissions et cetera, or do the finer legalities only apply if I'm making money? And should I be following the laws of Australia, or the laws of the nation where this blog's server is located (wherever that is), or what? Either way I'd guess I'm small enough to go unnoticed, and out of sight is out of jurisdiction, but... what if I'm not?

Any law graduates doing publishing & communications?