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Uncle Bob Says Bye…

For years, one of my daily stops had been Uncle Bob—a blog from a funny guy using the pseudonym Uncle Bob. I hadn’t visited in over a month, mainly because he wasn’t updating much. Just the other day I made one more stop and found out why he’s been fairly absent from his blogging responsibilities. His anonymity had been compromised by friends and family.

It’s one of the toughest things about blogging—trying to decide whether to make it known to your family and friends or trying to keep it anonymous. If you make the blog known to those around you, you can’t really write anything worthwhile because all of the good stuff happens when you’re actually around those people and what you’d write would make you look like a cruel bastard (if you’re really being honest). If you keep it anonymous, you can be more real or even take on a totally different personality, but then have to constantly worry that your friends and family might find it and wonder why you’re such an asshole online. This is what Uncle Bob ran into. His friends and family just don’t understand that his writing was for “entertainment purposes only”. Like most of us, he takes things out of context and exaggerates events to entertain his readers. When you’re writing anonymously you can do that. You can be an asshole, or a grump or pissed off at everything—even if you’re not like that in “real life”. Uncle Bob’s online personality was almost the total opposite of how he is in real life, but his friends and family have a hard time differentiating and started to wonder who he really was.

It’s unfortunate. But once you’re found out, or even once you share the blog with someone you know, you’re writing suffers. You simply can’t write about certain things, as honestly and openly as you would if no one knew. I’ve known quite a few bloggers that were hilariously funny when writing anonymously, but once people started finding out and their paranoia set in, the writing became contrite and lame. It’d almost be better to shut the site down than to try and keep it running, while also covering your ass through your writing or deleting or locking entries.

For me, keeping this blog is about letting those “brain farts” loose. As I’ve said before, I don’t pre-write entries and I don’t sit and finesse them. I just open up the browser and free flow it. If I catch a spelling or grammatical error later on I’ll probably fix it, but for the most part leave the entries alone. Once it’s posted, I’m happy to response through the comments section but the last thing I want is for someone to read the entry and then try and discuss it with me in real life.

Anyhow, from the beginning—over seven years ago—I tried to be pretty careful about putting names in. And last year I went through and changed some names that I’d previously put in. Of course, most people that find your blog end up finding it by accident or by searching for their own names. Not much you can do about that.

Most bloggers that end up quitting, end up doing so because their anonymity had been compromised, and since they’d written things that people might consider rude or mean, they have to close up shop or lock the entire site down. Once you go into exhile there’s really no coming back. Obviously you can’t let your readers know about your new URL without word getting out to those people your hiding from. And so it’s pretty much over.

For now another one bites the dust. Maybe Uncle Bob will return as a kinder, gentler family guy that talks about his kid and his DJ business without the funny stories about his hick family from Alabama… but then, it won’t really be the same and what’s the point of that.

Tags: blogging, anonymity, uncle+bob, blogs, internet, web

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