Deciding what to write about each day can be trying. I find that there are topics that are bubbling in my brain that just wouldn’t be smart to write about. You have to worry about who you will piss off, hurt, or alienate. Maybe what I write will change peoples opinion about me. For example there are kinks I am reluctant to write about, not that I am ashamed of them, but because I know that some people have trouble dealing with them.
Part of it is that we all (even me) want others to like us, to respect us to want to be our friends. It affirms that we are good and that our company is desirable. We all want that, even the trolls who do and say horrible things are looking for that kind of acceptance.
So we self censor, I just did it right now. I typed a tweet “If I never read about BDSM and Billionaires ever again it will be too soon.” and then deleted it. Not because what I wanted to say wasn’t true, but because the tweet it was in response to was retweeted into my timeline by someone I like. I could have pressed the tweet button, and perhaps offended people. But what would served by that? Everyone already knows how I feel about BDSM/Moneyporn.
I don’t know what this means in real world terms. I think that it is part of the struggle when you aren’t anonymous. It is often easier to be frank when no one knows who you are, but that just shields you from taking responsibility, and it is important to own your words and your actions. When I say anonymous I don’t mean people using pen names or pseudonyms but truly anonymous writing where you have no identity or relationships attached to your words. For example the egg/troll accounts that we have all encountered on Twitter. So the only thing I can think to do is to keep trying to find that balance and hope to learn the difference between the things I want to say and the things I need to say.
Because we all know the trouble I have shutting up.
Michael
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