Many people consider diaries to be personal, so it does make sense if one wants to hide the diary from offline people, or at least from the people who are mentioned in such diaries. So, for you, you are motivated to blog more or to contribute to your diary more if you think online people will find it interesting enough to comment on.

I think I understand what you mean about creating “awkward situations in real life“, since people think differently and one may simply want to tell someone else about a person, without letting that person feel about. You are right; it can be very hard to be yourself, and be transparent, to the online people, and at the same time, hide or keep things private from the offline people.

I also like the idea of password protected entries and I also think that having passwords on sites greatly reduce the audience one may have. Yes, that is what I was implying too. Password probably ensure on great levels that the people you do not want to access your site, will probably not be able to read your entries, but how can one know which online person is actually an offline person in disguise? It is so easy to create fake usernames and passwords, and to even fake ip addresses.

Thanks for the wonderful comment Jess. Your comments are starting to open up my mind more and more about different topics.

Myself, I don’t want anyone in my offline life to find my blog. I use my online blog as my diary for many reasons. It motivates me to blog if people will read and comment on it, and because people will read it, it makes me pull myself back to analyse and think about the events (rather than blog emotionally)… and as a lot of my blogs are venting about people in real life, I do not want them to read it.

The bigger issue is probably this: I am not as close to my real life friends as I would like to be. A few of my real life friends I don’t mind them reading my online blog, because they are the kind of true friends you trust with everything and don’t have anything vicious to say about them. The people I blog about though… we are friends, good friends even… but I disagree with a lot of their thoughts and actions, almost as if we are on different levels of… maturing? I don’t want to create awkward situations in real life, cause I know in time we’ll all mature and grow up and get over it, so I vent it out in my blog.

In the meantime, I do want the rest of the online world to see my blog. It’s like a second life, where people can judge you by your thoughts and text, not your clothing, makeup, what you own… the only problem is, it’s not very easy to be exactly yourself, with your name and pictures and everything about you, to let the whole online world know you, but also block out people you know in real life.

Andy mentioned password protected entries… which makes sense. But it’s mighty inconvenient, as people from the online world would find my website not very accessible. Instead of leaving their thoughts, they will leave and might not come back (Oh, I see you said this in your reply comment, lol).

Password protecting an entire site does help, though many times bloggers may want the entire online world to have access to their site easily, except anyone that they may know in the offline world. You have a very nice site, and by looking at the topic you are blogging about, it seems writing something personal that is not related to Korea or the entertainment business may indeed go off-track, yes.

I wonder if the same concept can be applied to many personal blogs also, where people do not write about themselves but about their personal views on personal things or people around them.

Thanks again, Andy.

I am guessing as search engines got more powerful, many people including yourself realized how someone in the offline world can simply type in a name and find many things related to that person. And a personal diary should be personal, of course. I hope as time passes, we have more chances and tools at hiding our personal information from the offline world, since we already have an ever growing number of tools that allow us to exposure our information more to the offline world through the online world.

Hmmm, if you remember what you wanted to say, simply go ahead and edit your comment within an hour. Otherwise, just let me know and I’ll edit it.

Thanks SP! I am hoping people who want to remain private can learn from your example.

Back then, before I getting this domain, I’d always e-mail my friends/acquaintances about my site, since I was “proud” of having a site, since nobody I knew, knew how to make a site, with HTML and all that. But then before, I didn’t really blog much, but after getting this domain was when I started blogging like how I am now. It wasn’t too much of a journal/diary for me then, then it is now. So that is why I don’t want search engines, and my offline friends, to know about my domain.

Eh, and there are some other personal reasons too, but it’s not really connected to the online-world, so I won’t mention it. Hmm… I feel like I’m forgetting something, something that I wanted to say, but I can’t think of it now… Maybe I’m not forgetting anything… Hmm…

I would like to order Thai food online, by the way. So far, that is not possible in California, as far as I know. Thanks again, Simonne.

Vera, thanks for the comment. I think it can be weird for many people. I would feel surprised or a bit weird too if a friend of mine, in the middle of a party or a party told me about their blog and told me to visit it, if I knew nothing about blogs or never imagined that friend having a blog. Password protected posts can help, until the offline friends start wondering “I wonder if that password protected post is about me, I should ask for the password.” :p

Yes, thank you! I’m glad you like the new look of the site and the comment editing plugin.

PS: I see that you changed the look, pretty cool..i love the countdown thing haha..

Do you think offline friends will listen and probably respect your decision, or anyone’s decision, on how a blog should be treated?

Using a pen name has disadvantages:
- if you have an online business (as I do), you cannot link it to your blog - this is not so much of a loss in my case, as half of my blog is odd enough not to want to link it.
- you get in touch with online people who will address you by your pen name (I did not know that I’ll end up by knowing so many great people online), so you’ll have a strange feeling of living somebody else’s life (after a while, you get used so much with your new name, that you may even sign e-mails to your clients with it)
- in online communities like LinkedIn, you cannot get in touch with former colleagues, because they won’t know who is that person contacting them (and you cannot fill in the places you worked in, because nobody from those organizations would know you).

The list could go on. However, if I were to start again, I’d do the same, because at the end of the day, a name is just a name, and I can always give my friends the link to my blog if I so decide.

Limiting personal information on a blog seems like a very good tactic, since it is really hard to hide completely in the online world. If one wants to be completely sure, or as sure as possible, they can post less and not write anything that they would not want to express in person.

DaveOlson, thank you for visiting and commenting. I wrote about the importance of transparency earlier this year, and I think it goes along with what you are saying. With search engines getting more powerful every minute of the day, being completely anonymous and staying off search engines is becoming a very hard thing to do. Many personal bloggers probably want to blog about people they know in person, without having those people find out about the blog.

Even if someone achieves favorable results when it comes to the task of hiding from others, as time progresses, bits and pieces of information will start to show up in search engine results and other online services, allowing almost anyone to find out a few things about anyone who may have a blog online.

Aside from political implications the big question is really about integrity.