I was just talking to my mom and realized I never commented on Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody. My mom’s been following my blog, keeping up with the new posts just to see what we’re talking about in class and all that jazz, and she said that it’s been inspiring her to maybe create her own blog. Called “Good Day Bad Day.” I think that was it anyway. But she said something that brought me right back to some of Shirky’s points….she said, “I don’t wanna do it to like, tell people stuff or something. I just wanna do it for myself. Like a journal.” So she wants to make a blog, because it “looks like fun” and so she can “write down” anything she wants about her days. But she has no intention of doing it for purposes of sharing with anyone else. Mittell reinforced Shirky’s point of people posting to the web for purposes of self publishing IN public, but not FOR the public. My mom just proved that point to be true. At least for her case. But then I don’t really understand why she wouldn’t just actually write in a journal. Or if she wanted to type, put it in a word document. I mean, then you don’t have to worry about having internet access to read it, or the potential for your computer to crash and lose everything. A handwritten journal stays in a drawer, where only you know where it is,

Anyway…I digress. I found this to be an interesting point though, about publishing in public but not for the public. I realized most of us do the same thing on Facebook every time we post on a friend’s wall. We are communicating to them in a public environment, but not actually intending for that whole public to read what we wrote. Then again, sometimes maybe that kind of thing IS for the public, whether we realize/admit to it or not. Perfect example: This morning a friend of mine at Princeton posted on my wall “hey have you heard this?” with a link to the Midd Kid rap song. So I posted back cluing him into the fact that yes…most Midd kids know the Midd Kid song…and put a link to the music video.  I was posting to HIM specifically, but there’s a good part of me that hopes other people will also see the video on his wall and continue to spread the word.

He and his friends will hopefully be going to YouTube and doing what Shirky calls “filtering.” I’ve also filtered by promoting the video and helping to lead others to it. I’ve also filtered on my own Facebook page by keeping only what I want on my wall, in my pictures, etc. Shirky makes us realize that on the internet, we are one and the same person in the eyes of everyone who is looking at us. In the real world, thats not usually how it is. We are different in different situations, with different people, as much as we might like to think we’re consistent throughout. This is why its often a hard decision whether or not to accept friend requests from teachers, parents, or co-workers… not just the friends who we hang out and take pictures with. But maybe we will lessen this aspect of filtering over time and these new facets of technology will only continue to change our social behavior, making our selves more similar in all different social situations…. Where will THAT take us?