The Nappy Cat Chronicles

January clipped your wires
The summer went straight through your tires
Every faded sign that passed you
Used to point the way towards you
Lately you’ve come to enjoy the generosity of strangers
The mechanisms you imply

Ladytron – I’m Not Scared

When I first got involved in blogging, a blog was a semi-private space on a semi-public internet. Michael and I ran a website enduringly titled “loserdotcom.” For him, our Angelfire site was a platform upon which he could freely express himself. For me, it was my introduction to HTML design.

It was liberating for both of in that pretense was unnecessary. No one knew about our site (to which http://theldc.com redirected) unless one of us told someone. I can’t remember if Google existed.Yahoo search existed and I know that no one was Yahoo-ing their friends and neighbors.

Indeed, if you avoided the Usenet, you could attach your name to anything and, unless you personally sustained its presence, its existence would create no repercussion. Now, everyone has a laptop, PrtScn key, and access to a wide array of video hosts, image hosts, and website caches. Internet content no longer disappears.

Sure, corporate investment has played a large role in creating the internet conditions referred to as Web 2.0. But, the larger online advancements are driven by private individuals who feel it necessary to stake their claim and brand themselves as digital and actual become synonymous.

I could use the current Iran situation as evidence that the public spheres of the digital and actual realms have completely merged. In fact, I’m sure that an American teenager who is Facebook friends with his or her parents would find it impossible to extricate one from the other. Posting pictures of yourself to Facebook or Myspace doing naughty things will inevitably impact your real life.

Whether I like it or not, this site is now my public face. As such, I assume that if I say something too wild or too provocative, there will be blowback. This goes for everyone: If you use a pseudonym you will outed by someone eventually. Now, since privacy is a natural instinct, I wonder, where’s the underground? Can there be an underground? If the base of the internet is a bunch of people loudly proclaiming their dissents, to where do the true dissenters congregate?