Last week in class we talked briefly about how students write essays, and all the sorts of random words that mean nothing that get thrown into these essays. "I, personally," was one such example, which I'd like to respond to here.
These, and others, are words that I know I write a lot. I write these words often because I spent a few years working and writing online.
I was an online news editor and moderator for a largish site. Previously I was invisible on the site (even though I was one of only a few females) but working there meant that I was at events and was visible, and slowly but surely became more active on the boards as well.
Any stated opinion, that was not labeled in at least 2-3 ways as an opinion, would immediately be flamed on this site (and it's not alone, most large sites with forums have this problem--so do many blogs). Flaming usually consisted of a "you're stupid" or multiple paragraphs noting exactly what things should have been cited in the stated opinion--in other words, not writing "I, personally" or "this is just my opinion but X, but I could be wrong" or anything else like it wasted both energy and moderators time.
So I learned, albeit sluggishly, that I was allowed to have an opinion, but only if I subvert my natural voice in a way to seem completely innocuous.
Now, had my experiences stopped there, then maybe I wouldn't still feel the intense urge to duck and cover at having a public blog (my others are all private--see? there I go again, just so nobody can point out that I do have others) or at having a public website from which all the harrassment can start again--but the experience did not stop there.
I met many of our users in person at various events. I had to interact with them, I had to be nice, they had to see what I looked like.
And most of these fellows were far from appropriate.
It became known that I had turned down someone prominent in the community, and his revenge against me became the most important thing (seemingly--see? there it is again) in many of these peoples' lives.
I summarily was stalked, harassed, had entire websites and message forums *created* about how huge my ass is, how unattractive I am, and so on. I had the marketing director at an event I was at tell me just how disappointed she was in me for hurting this person. I lost job offers, I quit my existing job, and I still occasionally get e-mails based upon things that I posted at that site 2 years ago. Violence was threatened online, but it didn't count because it was a public forum and they didn't use my whole name.
My opinions, and my general inability to let somebody down lightly, got me into a lot of trouble. I'm not comfortable posting strong opinions online for these and other reasons. I have them, but I'd really rather not share them here (what if a hiring committee reads this, knowing it's me, in a few years? What if they don't agree with me liking/disliking a theorist? What if my views have changed? And so on....)
One of my other brief contracts at another company involved researching potential hires online--their myspace, facebook profiles, and so on. I know these things can be found, heck, I know that I could find me. I can't expect any less from anybody looking for me in the future.
So I know that I have to be careful what I say and how I say it.
And given that, I have a lot of trouble--still--asking students to blog. I have spirited discussions behind "closed doors" on BlackBoard with my students. It's a safe room where nobody else can hear them. That's been my pedagogical choice so far. I'd love to see what can happen on blogs. I know many of my students already do.
I'm thinking of experimenting with anonymous usernames on drupal or wikis or moodle (oh my!) which would be harder to trace.
In any case, what do other people think about online safety, harassment, and potential hirability problems related to keeping blogs? Our students aren't concerned (and they should be--at least about myspace and facebook) so does that mean we have to be concerned for them?
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2 comments:
There are a few ways to rethink your own questions.
1. What would be the disadvantage(s) of secure/behind the scenes/protected writing?
2. What is the responsibility of the writer to always be aware that one's writing may produce pleasant as well as unpleasant results?
3. Should the incidents of unpleasant responses shape future writing? If they do, what might be the problems that will arise? If they don't, what might be the problems that will arise? How, as people who must interact with other people, ideas, things, etc (otherwise we are hermits), do we accommodate for either option?
4. And, assuming my third question about interaction is true, don't you have to return to the first question I ask? Why,then, is it a good idea to work only in private, particularly at the first year level, the place where interpellation is possibly the strongest in the university (thus its place as a required course)?
Actually, I'm looking at question 1 vs. fully open blogs as what I might like to write about for an article or conference presentation.
Blogs were the "big thing" that everybody was starting to use with their classes at Tech (I was doing multimedia/multimodal projects, that was already my "thing" when Cindy and Erin came into our class and started talking it up).
We had already had the Northwoods MOO, we had already used public discussion boards, and so on. And all these things were minorly successful.
But what drove me crazy was that even though all these were public "spheres," teachers got really angry if people from outside their courses chose to comment or participate in them.
"This is a private blog," "this is a private discussion," "you're not in my class and I don't want you talking here" were common responses to anybody outside the course commenting on a blog, discussion board post, or a programmer (yours truly) accidently wandering into a MOO conversation.
And if most teachers really do want their classes to have the "benefits of the internet" but still be private, why do they use THOSE forums, and NOT Blackboard or another course management tool?
In other words, if we don't want people outside our classes to see our writing (and, other than the fucktards that harassed me for two years I really don't care, that much) why do we make it public?
Why aren't teachers using the openness of the web more? And what would it mean if we actually did? (I know of at least one student who write a scathing response to an article, only to have its AUTHOR leave a comment--that's powerful stuff, and a powerful learning oppurtunity.) (And nope, I didn't answer all the questions, but I'm thinking about them.)
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