Who Dat?

How we view the web has a lot to do with our ages and the nature of our initial involvement.

I bring this up because someone contacted me via another platform and was trying to connect the dots between my presence here and a couple of other places. They were way off. What pegged them for someone close to my age and experience was the fact that they contacted me via direct message and kept the conversation between us.

Having started out on the net working for a once-mighty news and literary outlet, I am still more inclined to keep things private. From the mid-90s, the intense personal sharing and the zero-to-sixty engagement was disorienting to me then and still is.

So I don't take for granted that any personal disclosure is true unless someone tells me who they are in private...most of the time. I don't assume that "portrait" is the real thing. This has gotten me in trouble because at one point I honestly thought a man was posting a picture of a woman claiming it was him and made a stupid joke about it. I still feel bad about that. If it's any consolation, the monthly retinopathy shots are helping.

So who am I talking to and why? Does it matter? We might not ever meet. I engage because I agree, disagree, or am impressed by your argument or storytelling.

The bar is stocked. What'll ya have and what brings you here?

 

If someone asks me about myself, I'll generally tell it because I am who I am. If it's something super personal, I don't even share that with everybody who knows me in real life.
As for background and experiences, I share enough here that if anyone wanted to, they could probably sort out who I am.
Most of the stuff I tell is goofy stuff about myself and stupid things I've done because if you can't laugh at yourself, you're missing one of the great pleasures in life.

 

I don't think it is that hard to figure out who I am, but people who thought they had me pegged have gotten it wrong in the past. I think I've only confirmed who I am with one board member, someone I knew for real before I ever found this place. I don't really try to figure out who anybody else is on here. I don't worry about who people say they are on here. I worry about what I see in their comments and discussions.

 

A fuckton of people know who I am. I know who a fuckton of people are (tho not you, Oscar).

Anyone who tries to use private info to fuck with someone here's personal life is the lowest of the low.

 

Let me add, anyone who scours someone's social media and uses personal info against them here is also a tremendous piece of shit. And some of the most beloved posters in board history used to do that shit all the time. It's still fucked up.

 

Anyone who finds out who I am is bound to be disappointed.

 

A few people here know me or have met me IRL, the majority of you have not. Most of what I say anymore isn't about my shop. But on the rare occasion that it is, I still use my handle (long live Supergrass!) rather than my real name.

Mostly I enjoying posting -- and especially reading others' posts -- because we have some interesting characters here with the sense of humor and the-Titanic-is-sinking outlook that you used to be able to find a few minutes after deadline, when everyone in the newsroom bitched, moaned and solved all the world's problems.

Honestly, that was the best part about working copy desk and/or in the sports department of a daily newspaper.

 

Me sometimes:

 

It was a little more cutthroat when most of us were in the same business and thought there was a future in it worth cutting throats for.

Now? I don’t blare my name here for the same reason I don’t write my SSN on my car windows, but I don’t exactly cover my tracks. It’s like my friend the AUSA says when asked about the feds snooping on everyone’s phones: “Most of y’all aren’t that interesting.”

 

Driftwood:
Proud Navy vet
Middle age, average sized white dude
Former newspaper man
Current teacher
Likes to fish, drink beer, and grill

Beyond that, I'm fairly boring