Secret Blogger Identity
Posted by Rachel Balducci in Family on Wednesday, March 04, 2009 2:38 PM
I was surfing the web today and noticed that at one of my sweet little stops, the blog mistress was making some changes. After blogging for several years using pseudonyms, the writer has decided to start using her children’s real names.
I have always been intrigued by the decision of some bloggers to use pseudonyms for their children. Of course there are also those bloggers who don’t refer to their children at all, but that’s a different story.
My personal experience has been a little up and down—I’ll bet most people don’t start out blogging thinking anyone will really ever read what they are writing. When I started a few years ago, I knew exactly who my audience was: Gramma, Papa and Daddy. Those were the people reading the stories I was writing, and I filled the pages with adventures about our boys, by name, with lurid detail.
When readership picked up, I wasn’t concerned because by then I realized that a blog is hardly a real representation of In Real Life. I think blogs, even those that focus exclusively on the antics of the writer’s family, cover less than 8 percent of real life. And that’s probably pretty generous. From a safety perspective, I have asked my husband repeatedly his thoughts on the matter and continue to trust his judgement in the amount I do (or don’t) reveal online.
As my boys have gotten older, I have started to limit the amount of credit I give for certain “interactions.” That’s less about safety and more about protecting my boys’ right to some semblance of privacy.
I’m curious to hear from you about this phenomenon—do you take this route in your own blogging, or are you comfortable using your real names online? Are you deliberate in how you present your information, or is all this talk really over thinking the matter?
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