"Daddy, what's a plurk?"
We've lived in this digital age for more than a little bit so I'm sure there have already been the awkward "How I met your mother" conversations around online dating and friendster and what have you but for many of us that are of a certain age (meaning we remember what it was like before) yet have moved past the concept of the web as technology and can no longer separate the online and the offline, this shit be causing complications.
This is the era of the overshare and I'm already getting heart palpitations about this post, not to mention the one prior. This one, I just want to explain that first line. I want to tell you to not get it twisted. I want to give you the smirk of doom that let's you know that all that you're reading into it, stop it. I want to talk about how I'm not going half on a baby any time soon and y'all can quit all that sing-songy "sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" nonsense you have running through your head. It's a storytelling tool I'm using to make a point, not a statement on my life.
But, that other one? That's the equivalent of me running through the streets bare ass naked and shouting the British Are Coming!
I can't explain that away. I'm out there. I put her out there. And what comes is what comes.
I don't worry about my friends (and here I'm not making a distinction between online and offline). My peoples are my peoples. I trust them to be respectful. To ask appropriate questions at appropriate times and to let life, my life, happen.
Whether over drinks or direct messages or ichat sessions or hallway chatter at some web conference, we'll have our intimate real conversations about the state of my world and what it all means.
No, it's you acquaintances and strangers I worry about. Just because sometimes you get an @ reply from me or I "like" something on your friendfeed or I follow you on tumblr or we're last.fm friends doesn't mean you get to be all up in my business.
I'm saying, even if I was feeling plucky one day and bought you something off your amazon wishlist or let you beat me at pathwords on facebook doesn't mean I want you interjecting yourself into my she and me situations.
I don't want to have to explain myself to you even though you might read something I wrote online or saw some picture on flickr and think you know.
You don't know.
I worry about you. I worry about how you're going to infect what is really a two-person thing that happens to be shared publicly because that's the world we're living in. I worry I'm going to have to manage your feelings, your investment, your expectations. I ain't got time for all that.
As 50 Cent sagely put it, "You ain't no friend of mine. You ain't no kin of mine."
I also worry about her. Things get easily misconstrued online. Off the cuff comments directed to no one in particular can become declarations and manifestos.
I'm trying my best to stay the nudist Paul Revere but tonight, for example, I censored myself. I wanted to twitter this right before I began writing this post:
np: nowhere by aquanote. "I should tell you my love is going nowhere without you!"
Simple enough, right? I just got back from an intense movie about terrorism and Islam and the nuances of religion. The Martini and I have been having serious conversations about identity and foreign policy and culture. I sit down and hit play and Lisa Shaw starts belting this out over Gabriel's ridiculously soulful deep house beat and I'm singing along and spinning in my chair and that's a twitter moment if ever there was one.
But.
The little censor (first cousin of the little hater and kid sister to Vox Diaboli) has her arms crossed and is shaking her head back and forth. She's mad worried. She asks, "How is she going to take that?" and because my answer was "I don't know" instead of, "I'll take what comes" or "Kill that noise, I do what the beat say do", I bottled it up.
There aren't well defined rules here. I want to be honest and open and follow my instincts. I don't want to censor myself on the tools I use to stay connected to the people in my life and to the world at large. At the same time, I want to be respectful of her, of this, of the process of figuring it out.
So, I'll tread on but cautiously.
"Sweetheart, daddy doesn't remember what it was. In fact, I didn't know what it was when it was almost popular way back in '08. But, true story, it all started with a plurk. Isn't that special?"
