Alright, I’ve been holding my tongue about this for a long time.
But my pal Styro’s recent encounter with interweb ‘identity theft’ left me feeling, well, as though a long-festing wound of mine had been peeled open like a ripe, tender orange, and then had some salt and alcohol splashed into it, generating a frothy, burning fleshy soup.
I know — I just grossed me out, too.
But the point here is that I too have had a brush with something similar, though in my instance the circumstances were/are much more involved, complex, tender. First off though, let’s be clear: I have willingly given much of what’s been taken. I have put myself out here on the internet, exposed my loves, my interests, my tastes, and even my friends, none of which I own or ever intended to stake a claim to (as if I could pee on them and somehow make them untouchable, unreachable by others); on the contrary, I have given freely, and been very happy to do so. As I’ve said before, I love exposing others to new things, new interests, new people, new music and film and books and so on; it is a large part of the reason I do this. I get a great deal of joy and satisfaction out of hearing from people that I’ve opened up a new online world to them, or exposed them to something they’ve grown to love as I do, or gotten them interested in things they may not have known of before frequenting sweetney. Its thrilling, honestly, and I don’t at all begrudge those who’ve taken what I’ve given; in that transaction I indeed benefit, and I’d be a liar if I claimed I don’t.
However, let’s also be clear: there is, to my mind, a very definite difference between what most of us, myself included, do on the internet, which is mine snippets of other’s cool links and offerings hither and thither — an mp3 from here, a link from there — and the wholesale internet identity co-option I experienced.
Let’s put it in more concrete terms, shall we?
OKAY, Wholly hypothetical situation: Let’s say, like, a year or so back, you come to make a friend. And this person is sweet and nice and geeky and funny and you like them. They are very different from you in many ways — more wholesome, younger, kind of small-townish, not at all ‘alt’ or ‘indie’ — but you like them and embrace them. And then let’s say that slowly, over the course of this year-ish of you knowing one another, that this person — who is also a blogger — begins to publicly co-opt and reassemble as their own a disturbingly large amount of your interests, musical tastes, and even some personal linguistic proclivities. Let’s say that, again over the course of a year, they start frequenting your online haunts (which they of course found THROUGH YOU, because, being the blogger you are, you fucking broadcast all this shit everywhere), befriending your online friends and even in-real-life-friends, ALL AS YOU WATCH, AMAZED. But hey, you like this person, remember? You were even what might be described as kind of supportive and cheerleadery of this friend… at the beginning, at least. And you keep repeating that to yourself (I like this person… I like this person…) over and over as you watch this person’s writing change, and what they say they’re into, and their likes and dislikes, and who a majority of their ‘friends’ are, and so on — all to align more with YOU.
And at some point, obviously, it starts to creep you the fuck out, as much as you’ve been wanting to deny it and ignore it. Against your own better judgment and desire to NOT see, you can’t help but start to notice all the little things: the uncredited links taken directly from you; the sudden appearance of any blog you list as a favorite or reference positively over on this person’s blogroll; the reconfiguration of this person’s online identity and self-presentation in large and small ways that clearly imitate you and your interests.
So you agonize for months about this because, remember, you like the person. Despite everything (including, perhaps, reason), you believe they are good people and not meaning to upset or abuse you. And though all of this was flattering initially — imitation being the sincerest form, blah blah blah — you now know this has to stop, so you write this person an email and spill out all of your discomfort and concern, hoping for dialogue. What you get in return is incredulity; the person doesn’t know what you’re talking about... which, all things considered, is inconceivable and sort of insulting. Yet, unbelievably, that’s that. Then the person stops talking to you for a while, going so far as to (GASP) remove you from their blogroll — as if one can simply disappear and retreat from the truth.
And you feel kind of bad. I mean, not in the slightest thinking that perhaps you were mistaken — you could go back and chart out over months and months the development of the changes and alterations of this person’s blog and persona, starting before you were friends (thanks, WayBack Machine) to the present. But why do that, when you both know the score? However, you also know what it is to feel socially awkward and insecure, so you feel for the person. You don’t want to hurt them. You try to drop it, to let it go, to be the “big person” in this situation, walk away and just convince yourself that everything is okay….
And then you read Styro’s post, and all hell breaks loose.
No, in truth, its more like: you check their site for the first time in a while and spy several new alterations to their “About” section that reanimate your feelings of claustrophobia, anxiety, and weird violation. And then you read Styro’s post and all hell breaks loose.
I don’t know, guys. I want to be a nice person. I want ever so much to be an endlessly giving, loving, boundary-free person. But I’m clearly so not, and my Internet Personal Space Bubble has not merely been breached, its been breached and breached and breached, over months and months and months, and I can only take so much. Sigh.
So its come to this. What would Brian Boitano do?
