benlehman | (no subject)

(no subject)

So I haven't written a lot here recently. Here's why:

I hand-delivered a copy of Polaris to a great fellow here in Helsinki who, I guess, is a bit of a fan of mine. Anyway, he reads this journal, and made reference to some stuff that I'd done recently.

And damned if that didn't feel wierd. I mean, not that it was anything really personal, it just felt wierd to talk to this guy I just met about things I'd done in the past. It felt way too intimate for a first meeting.

When I started this journal, I made a point of making every post public, because I want to lead a life that is by and large without secrets and obfuscations. I have violated this rule only a few times, for very personal reasons. Ideally, I would like anyone who cares to know about me to know about me.

But, also, there are a lot more people reading this than just my circle of friends and family now. I have published a book and, like it or not, that makes me sort of a public figure. I don't know if I want everything in my life to be a matter of public record if people are actually going to read about it.

So I'm trying to decide between:
1) change my writing in this journal to mostly sanitized things that I don't mind total strangers reading.
2) move most everything to friends-lock, thus locking out a lot of people who I'd like to be able to read the journal from reading it.

Thoughts?

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There is the intermediate option I use, of friedns-locking particular posts such that specific subsets of your friends have access to them, but generally posting publically; I find it useful.

Ben,

Do what I do: make most everything public (that won't get you in trouble, like job-related stuff for me), but then be explicit with people: if you know me in real life, I don't want to talk face-to-face about what I post online. Imagine it's two different people.

Because, yeah, I hate that. When someone I know reads my weblog and brings it up over dinner: arghy-argh-argh.

It really is a fascinating issue that personal blogs have created. I know exactly what you mean; it's strange to think that there are people out there whom I've never talked to, and yet if I did, they'd know about my family, my dreams and aspirations, and my rants, while I may not know a thing about them.

As a counter-example, I've never met Vincent nor talked to him other than on his blog or the Forge, but I've read through his site extensively... including his older stuff on what it's like to grow up Mormon and so on. It was just very interesting stuff. Now I have this weird feeling that I *know* him as I know a friend, even though he barely knows anything about me in return and we've never really talked. That's what putting your life out there for other people to read will do.

Interestingly, it's a phenomenon that celebrities are familiar with. Their lives are public, and when they meet people on the street, those people often know a lot about them and act as if they're mutual friends.

Now, as to what to do about it, it depends on how much it bothers you. I friends-lock entries that I think are too personal for just anyone to see, and I don't have a big friends list. But if it was entirely too personal, why would I post it at all? So some things I keep to myself. Others I put out there for people to see, and I don't mind them knowing those things about me.

So my suggestion is to go that way--make a judgment call on each entry individually rather than sanitizing or completely locking your journal.

Yeah, totally argh. I like this option a lot.

Ben,

When I was in Japan I wrote a short story every week. In hindsight, I am glad that I didn't have a blog then, because I would have blogged and the pieces would have been less complete. Odd, that.

Anyway, I sent them out to family and friends and the circle of who read them grew and grew.

I am still finding that people know things about me and I have no idea how they found out about it until they remind me that I wrote it in those stories, one each week for a year, 52 in all. Its an icky, odd feeling.

I hear ya.

But if you are going to write in this thing, that's the price.

If you are going to post something that you don't want everyone to read, I'd just make it Friends Only.

Good luck on the book tour.

Sidenote: I explained the way the key words in Polaris work with my girlfriend and she was really impressed. I'm hoping for a game with her and Jeff and Julie (Jeff's wife) in the coming months. Rock.

Judd

Stop delivering games to freaky Finlanders?

That's trite, but you're not in a unique situation, and it has nothing to do with Polaris. It's been around for decades. And that situation is this:

people you meet on teh intarwebs are often a little weird. Use caution.

Now, when people start cosplaying as 'Ben Lehman', then you have problems.

Somehow I thought you were going to solve this already by moving all your gaming stuff to your other journal?

The guy? Very nice. I'd totally hang out with him again if I get the chance. (Dude, if you're reading this, totally not an issue w/ you.)

In general, I have met nothing but quality people via my online circles. Of course, I also control my online interactions pretty strictly.

This is more a question of intimacy. Do I want random people I meet to know these things about me? Because, you know, they will...

Apparently, people who like my game design are also interested in my personal life. I have no idea why.

yrs--
--Ben

I'm really sad to move to friends only because a lot of my friends (Ion, Lindsey, my family) don't have LJ accounts and still read the blog. Hrmph. There has to be some clever technological solution.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. A short story every week? I am totally envious of your writing skill.

P.P.S. I keep forgetting that you lived in Japan.

P.P.P.S. Good luck with the polaris. Sounds cool.

Easy. Game design, especially design influenced by the Forge, is intensely personal in nature. The vast majority of games grow out of a passion for the subject matter. Further, mechanics are a ritualization of an activity that can be handled without them. For someone to write effective game mechanics they need to either get lucky (happens all the time actually) or have a decent understanding of the activity they want to support.

By knowing about you: your dreams, your loves, your hates, your life I am able to better understand why you think what you think and where you learned what you learned.

Aside from that I think you're a pretty cool guy, and that's the real reason I try to keep up with you (despite having met you precisely once at GenCon this year). But the above is one of the reasons I try to get to know the people who write the games I play.

Thomas

Because of two things:
1) Connections
2) Boredom

In equal amounts.

I remember I was surfing way back some five years ago? Anyway, I was looking at MIT's computer engineering department webpage and their attempts at creating new PC input devices (Not "the mouse", think "The Pyramid", "The curved floating spheroid"... cool stuff). Anyway, I followed one link, then another, then another. Interesting article. Then I notice that this guy who wrote an article had a personal site, with information about himself, what he does, etc.

So, out of curiosity about the Man behind the Article, fueled by solid boredom, I head over to the personal pages.

And they opened up with this paragraph or two of diatribe, like "If you're here, you probably don't know anything about me. It disturbs me that people would look at another person's personal info, stuff about someone they don't know and will never meet. Those kinds of people must have some real problems to..." yadda yadda yadda.

If I had an Internet Knife, I would have driven it into his skull. I mean, what the fuck? If you post personal stuff, then expect people to read it. If you don't want people to know about you, then don't post about it. People will read that shit, fueled by nothing more than boredom and natural interest in the human condition.

Now, the above situation isn't YOU, but it may inspire some thinking.

As for me, I'm thinking that if you have really personal stuff, maybe keep it to Friends Only. I only did that once, IIRC, because my blog is pretty much for Game Stuff. On my kitkowski.com / LJ "andyk_rss" feed, I keep things pretty clean because my dad and grandma read them a lot. I don't say things over there like, "When I visited my best friend's place in Oakland two weeks ago I ate one of his magical weed cookies and tripped balls so hard that I thought time was going backwards".

If I were to write kinda personal stuff like that, intended for friends, I'd probably do the Friend-Lock thing. I'd post normal personal stuff normally, and keep "issues" locked to private/friends.

Many of my buddies do this, and sometimes I get a little TMI from them, but as Clinton says, "I Know This about my Friend. I tuck it Away. But I totally won't bring it up to them, unless it sets off one of my own issues and I want to talk about it."

-Andy

Forgot to add:

Many of my buddies do this, and sometimes I get a little TMI from them, but as Clinton says, "I Know This about my Friend. I tuck it Away. But I totally won't bring it up to them, unless it sets off one of my own issues and I want to talk about it."

I forgot to mention that I also dig, or at least am interested in, the personal events of my friends (so the above "TMI" is on a relative scale- There's nothing that can be TMI for me, pretty much). If a friend is having a hard stressful time, and thinks that by making "The King has Donkey's Ears" posts on LJ will help a little, then I am more than happy to take on that role. I like gossip, I like inside info, I like reading what my friends are thinking, and I like helping them if I can.

And likewise, if I began posting personal, private stuff I'd probably lock it down to Friends Only or something.

And funny Clinton should sign in. I've been reading his blog(s) on and off since he lived in like Seattle, and for a few years now I've been really curious about a turn of events in his life from some years back, because I went through something similar. But I've never asked him about it in person (or even online), because I'm not THAT close with him, but I figure some day I would. When I'm a Level 13 Friend with the Know TMI About Relationships Feat or someshit.

But yeah, I wouldn't bring that shit up at the juice bar out of the blue, so in your case I think you just hit upon That Guy who doesn't have that whole Public/Private barrier thing quite down yet. Not that they're A FREAK!!! or anything, just maybe they don't know the boundaries. or maybe it's a cultural thing, even.

-Andy

Or maybe it's a cultural thing, even.

Yeah, it seems like Internet-culture and real-culture are two separate things, and we're habitually open in Internet-culture, but I know that in my personal real-culture, it's a Big Thing when i can talk honestly with someone about what is going on in my head.

P.S. A short story every week? I am totally envious of your writing skill.

A piece of writing to be sent out every week having to do with my stay in Japan. Ended up with 52 pieces. It was the most discipline I have ever showed towards anything, I think. It also really drove home that I am happiest when I am writing regularly.

Anyway, thanks.

My stance on this is, "If you don't want the whole Internet to know it, don't post it publicly on the Internet."

The only clever technological solution that could possibly be secure is for your non-LJing friends to choose a username and password for reading you blog - that is, for them to get free accounts.

I was thinking, maybe, about something that automatically e-mailled a me-selection list of folks when I updated my journal.

yrs--
--Ben

But without accounts or some other form of authentication, LJ has no way to know whether someone is a person that you approved to see the post or not.

Uh-oh. You have fans. Now what?

The discomfort that you feel when a random stranger knows all about you because they read your blog? That seems pretty common for anyone with a fan base. Your options seem to be to either get over it, or to turtle up.

Frankly, I'd advise you to try and deal with it. If for no other reason than turtling up would probably hurt your sales. People like authors who seem to be open and accessible. (That's why I read Neil Gaiman's blog. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/officialgaiman/)) I agree with the common advice here: friends-lock the really private stuff, and keep blogging publicly otherwise.

(As for your friends without LJ accounts: I have no idea. You could just e-mail them the text of your post. Perhaps someone more tech-savvy than I might have a better solution?)

And finally, this is probably obvious to you, but in case it isn't:

Never write down anything you wouldn't want made public some day.

Accounts can be hacked; diaries can be stolen. Nothing written down is ever really secret.

journal to friends only.

Mailing list for people who dislike livejournal, or are confused by technology, or simply find the account inaccessible for other reasons, like work firewalls.

That actually sounds like a pretty good plan... Except, of course, I'd prefer to have it automated. I guess you can't have everything.

yrs--
--Ben

Like I said, not about secrets, it's about intimacy. I keep a game-designer blog in public at http://benlehman.blogspot.com, which I think is the one that most people read.

BTW, it doesn't look like we've met. Hi, I'm Ben. What's your name?

yrs--
--Ben

Hi Ben,

I'd recommend starting another LJ and only let the folks who you want reading it, know. Email them privately. You can either keep this one light, or drop it entirely. That way those without LJ accounts can still read, but people you don't know aren't likely to track it down.

Yeah, that's not bad at all - a good feature request for the LJ team. Adding an email address to a custom filter (or to your friends list) and having it send mail to them on your behalf when you update. There would be potential for abuse if LJ automated that, though - people could spam purchased "friends lists" using their servers.

Hi! I've replied with a personal message on the Forge.

I use a pseudonym on LJ; in fact, when I started, I thought it was common practice. My wife and friends all use pseudonyms. It seems weird to me when someone uses their real name on LJ. We can discuss this further, if the topic interests you; let me know.

I just threw that "secrets" comment on the end there, as an aside. It was actually rather off-topic, so, sorry about that.

I gotta say though, security-through-obscurity never lasts, so it's worth being wary of this...

I had two posts on a separate blog, about privacy:

http://blog.forgreatjustice.net/articles/2005/08/29/a-fool-and-his-content-are-soon-parted

http://blog.forgreatjustice.net/articles/2005/08/29/blog-is-not-email

...in case you're interested. As I say in the second one, seriously reconsider whether what you're really wanting is one-way emails. Retro-styling!

FWIW, I'm subscribed to your LJ as I find you an interested person and intellectual, aside from all that game business. You played Polaris with me, but you also crashed on my couch, y'know? Some people use their LJs (or at least public posts therein) to broadcast that sort of thing. (See also: JWZ, although he's an extreme case.)

It is possible that there's software that does this. Investigate ecto; it seems to have a lot of features.

It works just fine if no one ever gives a damn about you. As soon as you do anything noteworthy, though, it goes out the window.

I actually split my online postings into two blogs, Ben, one on LJ for personal stuff, and a Blogger blog for game design stuff. I felt like I was boring half my audience with every post (by audience I mean the about 10 people who read what I post).

Actually, I was thinking more "Finland-culture", not "Internet culture".

Yeah, I was pretty sure that you were; I was running off at a tangent.

Two things.

Dude, where's your blogger thing? You don't appear to have a link in your profile for it.

Second, dude, you're in Madison? I'm in Morristown. Hi.

If you've ever read Schlock Mercenary, a webcomic...the author has a livejournal devoted to the webcomic and discussions therein, and has a separate livejournal for his personal life. Both are, as far as I know, completely open.

So at least some celebrities (which you are one of, now, right?) make that work.

And funny Clinton should sign in. I've been reading his blog(s) on and off since he lived in like Seattle, and for a few years now I've been really curious about a turn of events in his life from some years back, because I went through something similar.

You will bring this up very soon. :) I'm so curious now.

Silence, cunning, and exile.

Worked for James Joyce.

I'm down with the last two, but I like to talk too damn much.

yrs--
--Ben

Profile updated. It's in the bio section now.

And regarding Madison, yeah, I was there. You just missed me! I moved to Washington, NJ last week. A bit farther away, but Hi!

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Four words.

Re: Four words.

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