Tuesday, Jan 7, 2025 - Being Public on the Internet Once Again

After having read some books about surveillance on the internet, the thought of having any sort of public face, revealing myself to both the masses on the internet as well as the all encompassing eye of internet search archives and web scrapers (perhaps even finding myself in a LLM training corpus), is a fraught and mildly stressing one. Although I find comfort in the deluge of information that we live in, the deep sea of data that almost functions as anonymity, I understand that protection may crumble at the unfortunate ire of any possible malicious actor. All it takes is one angry gamer to find yourself at the receiving end of an internet hate storm.

Thinking about random a random person choosing to make my small internet presence their problem still feels absurd, despite living in an internet culture where this happens on a regular basis. We are caught between the safety of existing in private and the self affirming state of existing digitally.

We all have a desire to be seen by someone, to find community and culture and feel understood. At times I've searched for that on the internet, finding discrete communities of like-minded individuals to chat or share ideas with. In contrast to the real world, the internet is radically public, where often we are unable to separate our private selves from the eyes of strangers. Out in the real world, we wear different masks depending on where we are and who we are around. The visibility of our thoughts on the internet disrupts that, offering any published sentence, well thought or not, to the hungry eyes of many content consumers.

By default, Facebook posts are public. By default, Instagram posts are public. By default, Goodreads reviews are public. Default settings for our social media accounts allow for the opportunity to go viral, despite any desire to do so. If we do not make a decision for ourselves about the separation of our public and private lives, the platforms that surround us will make it for us.

Having other platform options can be helpful, but due to the network effect (increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service), without a large mass movement from one platform to the next, winners will stay winners and losers will stay losers. We saw something of a mass movement from platforms on Twitter (now X) to Bluesky, though the reasons were due to mismanagement and a lack of moderation.

Despite all of these issues, I still want to be present on the internet. The desire to be public with others feels so deep and visceral that it trumps the anxiety of surveillance. As an artist, I want to be heard, and to find community with other artists and creators.

Similar to passively hanging out at a cafe and enjoying the atmosphere, or sitting at a park watching the day go by, internet pubic spaces hold the capacity for a loose amount of connection with others, a shared togetherness. Often times, more importantly, the ways that our social media presence can reach beyond just our internet personas and provide context or enhance our public personas can't be overlooked. Making friends with an artist can involve finding their Instagram profile or online portfolio, and asking questions about that. Our digital selves proving as a colored backdrop to our personalities, allowing us to show off our skills, hopes, and dreams. My profile is a curated view of who I am and who I want to become. We've always been reinventing ourselves, now we do it for everyone to see if they desire.

I still try and find balance, more carefully curate my online presence. I've gone through and changed the visibility on many of my posts and profiles, and thought hard about what I want to put where in my social media. Blog posts like these are curated forms of my thoughts, it's unlikely I would make a blog post that feels overly private, though as our relationship to ourselves and the internet is always changing, I will never discount the possibility.