Not a photo of me (it's Monica Bellucci)
But it's the one that'll go up if I can't find one beautiful enough
I’m toying with the idea of putting my photo on the blog proper.
Reasons:
1. I’m not really particularly anonymous, I mean you can click on the radio bits and hear me speaking, and being called my actual name, so why the shyness?
2. It actually surprises me how many anonymous blogs there are out there. I can see the point in some, but not most. Are we all afraid to stand by what we write? Are we all just a big bunch of Jessies?
3. The Misssives isn’t a diary. I don’t get too personal. There’ll be no Girl With a One Track Mind bottom fixated naughtiness over here, I tell you that! (Cue the sound of readers leaving)
4. I don’t tend to trash anyone who knows me, so anyone would be hard pushed to get angry about anything I’ve said about them. In fact, putting the pic up might act as a protective charm (guess who's just finished all the Harry Potter books) against going all silly and drunkenly blogging about some cow who upset you at work, that I'll have to get up in the middle of the night to delete.
5. I don’t blog about work on the whole. Even when I used to do very bloggable work, I resisted the temptation (as it would have got me the sack and wouldn’t have been fair on my students as a lot of them were fecking eejits but were too young to know so can hardly be blamed. That, and the fact I was very fond of the fecking eejits as they were hilarious and bless).
I don’t blog about work now, because it is too dull and I wouldn’t want anyone to think of the Misssives as being less than a carnival of raciness. But not Belle De Jour raciness, you understand. (Cue sound of some more readers leaving).
6. I think it may make the blog feel more personal. And while the artist’s red impression of me (To your right. Artist: Curly Niece. She does commissions, I get 15%) will stay, I feel it may be time to stick my actual face up here.
7. It will be funny to see if any of you got the impression I was completely different looking than my actual self from what I write. You know when you google someone you’ve only heard on the radio and they look like a horse or a bloated dead body and you are a wee bit disturbed from that point forward? Well that might happen. Or not.
8. The photo will not be a naked one (Cue sound of final reader leaving)
Why is this decision tooo difficult, though? I’ve posted photos before as part of the posts, why not have one in the top corner? Why does this feel like such a big deal?
Are you anonymous or not? And why?
Discuss.
31 comments:
Ooooh. You've got me wondering now.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing. The reasons?
If anyone read a few posts of my blog for clues, did some basic searching and followed some of the links they would easily come up with my real name, and plenty of photos of me, Mrs Jaggy, Jaggy Jnr, cats, home, wedding, parties etc. Indeed, one reader already has.
I'd like to think that, although I'm no Daniel Craig, neither am I a stunt double for Quasimodo and so I shouldn't be too embarrassed by my looks.
The biggest problem is coming up with THE photo. Not so casual as to look deliberate, and not so dramatic as to look pretentious. Silly faces/poses are a no-no.
I definitely don't blog about work, it IS too dull. Although I might mention some like minded colleagues I see outside work.
Maybe one day. Soon.
No. I don't believe in anonymity.
Since I started writing, I've never referred to anyone I know by name, always report events out of sequence, and am now much more vague about work. While I don't say anything I'd be worried about anyone knowing me reading, I suppose I am, for the most part, anonymous-ish.
I took the pic down when I changed job, and kind of felt like it was a choice between that and deleting the blog altogether, which I didn't want to do.
It probably sounds daft, and vain, but I miss having my photo on my blog. For whatever reason, it made me feel like I was more "real" to my readers.
Post the picture!
Can't talk about work very much anyway - that sort of thing gets frowned upon from about 40,000 feet where I work. Not quite the Official Secrets Act though i was once made to sign that.
However, point 6 - commission. Most galleries take 50-60% so you are cheating yourelf.
D.
Mine is up and people still read. Since I already have pictures of you in my head I've never noticed you don't have a picture :) I had far more inner debate over sticking my voice up there.
Post it! x
Eh? Didn't you already put up a photo of yourself dressed as Marie Antoinette? I already have a mental picture of your face, so you may yet surprise me.
go on put a picture of yourself up. I am not anonymous but it is only a matter of time before the shit hits the fan and some mom of one of my daughter's friends comments on my 'obscene' blog.
Go, on put it up! There is no such thing as anonymous blogging anyway. Somebody, somewhere (and the radio for you gives it away anyway, as you say) will figure out who you are if they want to. As you're not saying anything bad about anyone, you've not much to lose..apart from nobody knowing your face as you walk down the street!
Right now there is a blogger in the Cairo expat scene who thinks she's anonymous and blogs about people here. I'm sure it's not a ploy and she doesn't realise that some of them are reading! They are often the mothers of kids in her kids' classes. She's all nice and smiley at school/play dates and then bitches online about them!
Not the best way to win friends and influence people!
You might as well post the photo, there's been a few on here already haven't there?!
And it'll make it easier to spot you at the Lorelai gig on Saturday!
I've had about six different blogs: a different one for different stages of my life.
I don't post anonymously but at the same time I usually don't tell people that I do blog. The writing is always for me first and other people very much second, and I've only ever come to grief as a result of it once.
My boyfriend's exgirlfriend stumbled onto it before he had had a chance to tell her he was dating someone new (they were already separate) and the abuse heaped upon me was rather daunting. Still, he had asked me not to write about us and I had considered that before deciding that it was MY life and I wasn't going to be censored.
Jaggy: Yeah you don't want a myspace teenager photo with you sucking in your cheeks and one shoulder bared, do you!?
Anon: Ha! I expected this kind of comment!
Cat: Yeah, you were best off taking your photo given your new job. Shame though, Kitty's not the same...
Donny: She knows she's onto a good thing.
Gorilla: Yeah that's the point: I've put heaps of pics up in the past. Time to brand the blog permanently. I wonder how Mario Testino's fixed this week.
Emma: Your blog actually was one of the ones I thought of. I thought, "Emma talks about tits bums, fannies, penises- the lot! And She's got her pic up!"
Insteadi: Ooh she's in trouble!
Jock: You aren't going to the Moorings hoping to see me in a scrap again? Are you? (see Fight Club post, if you didn't read it the first time)
Kitty: Hi and welcome! Someone could write a book couldn't they of all the mishaps that confessions on blogs have caused them. But I do have one rule- don't say anything that will upset those you love. (or those who bankroll you!)
Put up the photo. Would be good to put a face to the musings.
Interesting question.... I have been wondering whether to stick a photo of me on my blog, but I guess I still like to kid myself that no-one (apart from the ones I tell myself) knows what I look like.
And Jaggy isn't a bad looking man at all!! ;)
Duck: Watch this space.
Helga: I'm off to check out Jaggy!
Yeah, .... ehhh... what?
Sorry, let me get this right. You post a picture of one of the sexiest women on the planet and expect me to pay ANY attention to your post?
Anonymity rules!!
Gordon: And who's to say my actual picture won't rival that one of lovely Monica?
Shit..I've totally blown it now. I'm really going to need that airbrush...and some emulsion.
Yes I am going to the gig and yes I do want to see the wrath of the Missy played out in front of me!
Mmmmm.
1/ I like to maintain the illusion that I'm a good-looking 18-year-old.
2/ I want to keep the option of ranting about my work. One of these days...
3/ I'd have to edit out a hell of a lot in case Mrs Farty saw what I'd been posting. I'm not tired of life yet!
Farty: I suppose every office might have a farting bloke who has a tardis on his desk so even with that photo of your workstation you posted last week, people might still be guessing :)
I'm gonna keep toying with you!
Noddy: That very cryptic of you, Noddy. Do we actually know one another? Are you...are you..my f-f-father??
Wahey, congratulations. That wasn't so difficult was it?
Yer no bad eh?
First let me second Jaggy's congratulations on making the big leap to non-anonymity :)
There are really two reasons why I hide behind an alias and don't display a photograph. First, there's the fact that I don't want anyone who knows me to spot me in Blogland and then pass the URL on to the ex or my Son. The latter would, no doubt, be embarrassed more than anything else (not least because I've written about him!); the ex would use it as one more thing to beat me around the head with!
The second is quite simply that I don't have such a good opinion of my fizzog that I would want it to leap out at me every time I loaded the blog. How could I, then, possibly wish that on someone else? I've got used to the idea that other people may, strangely, find me more or less attractive ... but I've also got used to the idea that I can't see myself in that way!
But it is genuinely my own rear end on my blog!
Jaggy: Why thank you- on all counts.
Ro: You have got a good bum, it must be said.
Nice photo! You have a lovely smile!
It's a great pic!
Am I missing something or is there no link back to your profile from your blog?
T and A: You'll find me on page 45 of the "Great British Book of Smiles" (as seen in the Simpsons)
Stepehe: Thanks. Erm, I suppose there's not a link. Not intentional, didn't realise. There's bugger all of interest in my profile anyway. I'm bad at blurb.
You do look familiar and far too bonnie to be from my loins! Now, from whence do I recognise you?
Hmm, I read this and went off and came back and went off and here I am. Ok I can only say that Ms R is me but she is a part of me and one particularly smart ass side of my writing. The use of the third person gives me distance and suits the fact that I do social commentary. While I don't have a full photo up, I am not that anonymous. I could be easily found but I guess I wouldn't want potential commercial clients to see me on my blog and say "Oh I saw you in a bikini, AP knickers etc".
But you are being you and writing about aspects of your life in a day to day way so I agree, it's not a big deal at all.
Ms R: You do also write from time to time about relationship stuff as I do not. If I did, I would be anonymous as things could get messy. So I see where you are coming from completely.
And really, the Misssives are fairly fluffy. And even though everything I write is true, no-one really believes me!
There isn't really any such thing as anonymous blogging, as a couple of commenters (commentators?) have already said - I guess if someone really wanted to, they could figure out who you were. That's what happened to me, and I thought I was anonymous and I didn't write anything at all controversial. But then, in a lot of cases, that someone would have to really, really want to spend time tracking you down (i.e. they'd be a weirdo).
If you're happy with what you write and if no-one would get upset particularly by it, then why not be known?
However, there's one very un-anonymous blogger in the Israeli English speaking community who writes about the people she works with in a really negative way, giving lots of details about her workplace and hapless colleagues. She has a photo of herself up. I always wondered what motivated her...
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