Comments on: Does online gender matter ?

By: mandarine » Blog Archive » We do not really want to live long

mandarine » Blog Archive » We do not really want to live long — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:12:15 +0000

[…] none the wiser « Does online gender matter ? Who am I writing for ? […]

By: mandarine

mandarine — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:16:03 +0000

I guess you are right about the fact that each person sees privacy (and therefore anonymity) from a different angle.

By: びっくり

びっくり — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:07:59 +0000

I can understand withholding personal information, but it is interesting to see which things different people hold sacred. As was mentioned here, you had no qualms about being labeled French or Aeronautic Engineer, but use a pseudonym. I have seen others that avoid using any place names, even when talking about something they did in the distant past. I think it usually just comes down to what each person is thinking about the most.

I had published my former addresses in my blog, but once my daily hits jumped from one a day to thirty, I decided it wasn’t just my trusted family and friends reading. I also avoid putting other people’s names in my blog unless they have previously consented. One recurring character is The Good Doctor.

Good luck protecting your secrets, while sharing your public info.

By: mandarine

mandarine — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:38:39 +0000

Very true. Food for further thought.

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 11:13:19 +0000

I was thinking about this recently. If your online gender doesn’t matter, why do you go out of your way to tell us that you’re French? What am I supposed to get from that. Should I think, “Oh, Mandarine probably wears a beret, eats baguettes, lives in Paris, likes Jerry Lewis, cooks snails, discusses philosophy over wine, and snacks on frogs legs”? That would be absurd.

Yes, the French as whole do like to do some of those things more than other nations as a whole, but for individual French people, whether they like those things or not is a completely personal matter. I’m an American, but I don’t have a car, let alone a gun. What’s the point of knowing our national identitiesâ€¦

But! But you do tell us your nationality, and I think it does tell us something about you, even if it can’t really tell us about you. Don’t you agree? Why should gender then be different, other than the enjoyable novelty of genderlessness?

Idle thoughts.

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 20:28:06 +0000

Again, your eloquence is amazing, especially on this topic. The issue of gender has been a funky one for me, and I had some surprising responses when people found out. Not that I was hiding, it just wasn’t relevant.

Yet, the interesting point that jumped out is that while we have a “relationship” through the shared communication between our blogs, as soon as I read “aerospace engineer” my heart jumped. A commonality, a connection, a reason to expand our non-existent but existing relationship.

Which is part of the point of bring the issue of privacy vs. sharing a bit of who you are with your audience. Creating a connection with your audience is very important to attracting and maintaining an audience. You don’t have to reveal all, but reveal enough to help us recognize you as a fellow soul sharing a spot on the planet and give us enough to create a relationship with you in our heads. I spoke about this kind of connection in an article called Global Awareness May Change The Way You Communicate on the Web, which I believe makes a very important point about geographic sensitivity that is changing how we communicate via the Internet.

Thank you, to you and your cat, for taking my little points and expanding them so beautifully and giving me greater insights into the points. You challenge me and inspire me. Thank you so much!