Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Anonymity

In many respects, I am all for it. The opposite is nothing in and of itself.
However. With regard to this blog, I have now implemented a change in the comment boxes whereby it will be necessary to identify yourself if you’re interested in commenting. Most of my blogging friends are already hip to this. I, in my innocence, thought that nothing I had to say would be so controversial as to invite anything like weirdly creepy responses or, in this case, criticisms such as “hypocrisy” and “pretentious” – (no need to defend my honor here, friends, I already know you have my back… and if you are my friend, anonymous, I’m gonna say we need to talk!), but one thing I do put forth is that if you’re going to criticize someone, jeez, you ought to at least give me that same chance, and I can’t do that if I don’t know who you are. Well, I guess I could, but I’d rather have more information.
I do want to say, in my own defense, having looked up pretentious and hypocrisy in the dictionary, just in case I missed some nuance of their definitions in my head, mmmm, I really don’t think so. Or – I’ll even give you this – I could almost see where someone could call me pretentious – in fact I’m somewhat obsessed with not being pretentious, which could be construed as a sort of pretense. As for hypocrisy, well, I just don’t know one single person who is so fully evolved that they follow through on all their best beliefs and intentions (I’m not hanging with the Dalai Lama), and I want to say right now that I have a lot of people in my life who I really admire nonetheless, and who indeed, have more integrity than I do. Also – what interests me in writing, and, um, life, are the contradictions in all of us, the inner conflict we all struggle with. So, in conclution, I am not looking to be perfect, which has caused me a tremendous amount of pain in the past, nor am I looking to be a wildly inconsistent brute. I am interested in being right-sized, and I’m working on it.
All that said, I’m still not sure how eating meat makes me either pretentious or a hypocrite.
And now we will return to our regular programming.

6 comments:

Teodoro Callate said...

wow...i totally missed whatever comment was made. in that other post i thought that was some joke out of nowhere or an offhand comment you were making. i'm gonna look for the post now.

my original statement stands. don't let nobody tell you who you should be. they can get over it. you's the bomb, betsy.

and they ain't. specially if they can't sign their name.

Teodoro Callate said...

i saw the post. whatever.

you know, my blog is all of two days old, and i've got some anonymous posts that I'm not sure of a) the identity, or b) their intentions. they may or may not be mocking me. they're either mocking me or i'm sensitive and not getting the humor. i've decided to let it go and think that it's the latter for now.

but if it's the former, then it's just too bad. i mean, yeah, this is kinda self indulgent, but it's also fun and harmless and YOU are the one with your name on the blog, so you can write whatever you dang well please. if they don't like it they can go somewhere else. or sign your name and participate in a good discussion....hey, you're up for discussion by the simple fact that you do this and respond to posts.

but that in-between shit is lame.

Elizabeth Crane said...

Well put, Ted.
I'd like to note here that in my post there's a spelling error in the word "conclusion", which I think is kind of ironically funny since that same sentence points out that I am not looking to be perfect. I obviously proved my own point. I was once a spelling bee champion.

Elizabeth Crane said...

I think the anonymity angle interests me because I grew up thinking I wanted to be famous, when what I really wanted was just not to be unknown. Having achieved an interesting level of fame whereby you get to do the work you want to do but can walk down the street anonymously, I find, is the best of both worlds.

Ken Foster said...

Have you confirmed that the anonymous poster is actually Tom Cruise?

Elizabeth Crane said...

Tom, is that you? If that's you, you should name yourself, man! Because I'm pretty sure you eat meat too!