Someone just commented on a LiveJournal post I made in 2003. Luckily it was nothing incriminating but it made me think. The freedom blogging gives you to impulsively publish something to millions of people that’s going to stick around is something that’s never happened before. There are private paper diaries but they are hard for random people to come across and can be burnt. There are paper publications but the barriers to publishing filters out the vast majority of the rubbish. Nobody yet has the experience of growing old with comments they made as an angsty teenager still floating around on the web, even if they thought they’d been deleted.
Don’t blog something if:
* You’re going to regret it in 5 minutes
* You’re going to regret it in 50 years
* There’s someone who is alive or might be alive in the future who you wouldn’t want to read it (think children you will have in the future or future employers).
Of course knowing what you’re going to regret in 50 years is impossible but it’s just something to think about. The experiences we live through are what make us who we are, but that doesn’t mean that we want other people to have a detailed account of our past. Think before you hit submit.
I’m thinking… yeah I think that’s ok…