If your ideas are associated with you and your name, is it easier to be controversial, confrontational, or brave on the Web or in person? Think carefully about this one.
What do you think?
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Who you are in person and who you are online are not always the same thing. Usually they're shades of one another, which means different ideas and themes may be associated with each of your personae.
Also, the online version of you conveys ideas in a limited, focused fashion, whereas the live version of you involves context that doesn't transmit online. So, in answering: Easier? Online. More complete? In person.
Given that people tend to put more thought into their actions on the web, but more emotion into their actions in person, this is a difficult one to assess.
Oh, hell with it. Blog post by morning
Justin and Ian:
Part of where I was coming from with the post has to do with what we're willing to say in front of small groups instead of in front of the entire world (e.g. the Web as indexed by Google). I think some people may become more cautious about putting their thoughts on the Web if they know that it can be Googled and associated with their own name. What do you think?
It's easy to forget that what you write on, say, Twitter is viewable to anyone anywhere, and is archived by a whole barge-full of different services.
In that light, people do say things they later regret. I've been unrestrained in my own tweets, but I've so far not put my foot in my mouth.
Then again, the past could easily come back to haunt me, so I've got to take it on faith that I've never said anything that I now wouldn't.
Likewise. Does this idea give you a bit more sympathy for politicians who are vilified for changing their positions?
That goes a few different ways.
1) Those politicians often completely flip to the polar opposite of what they were arguing before (often using the same words as the people they once railed against, or embracing concepts they specifically spoke against), which is something entirely different from saying something glibly that someone else shouldn't have heard.
2) I hate it when people can only think in terms of a one-dimensional line of Good vs Evil, where if someone says something all the way on one side and later says something entirely different (not at all related to the first point), people will think they're flip-flopping on issues (they aren't).
(To answer your question: Yes)
3) I do think politicians say things without thinking about who's listening. Blagojevich comes to mind. I'll bet they also regret it afterwards.
Actually, I think the whole forgetting-that-what-I-say-is-public thing is stronger for regular people, because they just aren't ever in the public eye, so they would never expect someone to be watching what they say. Politicians are trained otherwise.
I think the Web 2.0 era is going to change things for “normal” folks between their Facebook/Twitter activity, YouTube, Flickr, and whatever else they do online. It may be more of a case of not saying or doing stupid/profane things than position reversal, unless it's taken to extremes.