Arse Elektronika: Avoiding the Emily Gould Effect - Susan Mernit & Viviane

Slideshow Transcript

1. Slide 1: Avoiding the Emily Gould  Effect: Blogging, Narrative &  Transparency Susan Mernit & Viviane September 26, 2008
2. Slide 2: “Of course, some people have always been more naturally inclined toward oversharing than others. Technology just enables us to overshare on a different scale.” .—Emily Gould, Exposed, NYTimes magazine, August 2008
3. Slide 5: What is this talk about? •Putting your sex & relationships stuff out on the web •Oversharing vs. Transparency •How the real time web changes things
4. Slide 6: The internet is forever • If you’re thinned skinned or sensitive, don’t  do it. • What if a date or prospective employer  Googles you and finds your writing? • What is the agreement with your partner  or the person you’re dating? • How will you feel when you read your  narrative years from now?
5. Slide 7: Case Studies in Notoriety: Julia  Allison, Emily Gould, Xeni Jardin, Zoe  Margolis
6. Slide 8: Julia Allison, 2007: Girl about town heads to Silicon Valley….
7. Slide 9: Julia vblogs with the start up boyfriend, hits high tech parties, twitters about clothes…they break up…in public. Reblogging Julia happens.
8. Slide 10: What do you get when people laugh at you? Attention. •146,000 Google links •500,000 + views on YouTube
9. Slide 11: Julia Allison, August 2008: The Paris Hilton of the Net gets the cover of Wired, sets records for newsstand copies sold.
10. Slide 12: 2006: Emily Gould starts blogging about her dating life in gossip rag Gawker—and tells everyone in the office about dating a co- worker.
11. Slide 13: “I’m going to try to never write about you,” I whispered to the boy whose shoulder my head was on two nights ago. …Oops.”
12. Slide 14: “I had made my existence so public in such a strange way, and I wanted to take it all back, but in order to do that I’d have to destroy the entire Internet.” --Emily Gould, Exposed, NYTimes
13. Slide 15: 2008: Emily Gould sells a cover story to the New York Times on her blogging regrets, gets 1, 216 comments and a reported $1MM book deal
14. Slide 16: 2008: BoingBoing editor Xeni Jardin removes blogger Violet Blue’s posts from BoingBoing—1,500 people comment. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLjfJgrqIU
15. Slide 17: Xeni tells the LA Times: “I just wanted to take this material down for a host of reasons that I don’t want to talk about in public…” Violet Blue responds on YouTube—quoting Metafilter commenters.
16. Slide 18: Show first part of Violet Blue video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= gJLjfJgrqIU
17. Slide 19: Girl with a One Track Mind Zoe Margolis first blogged about sex in 2003. In 2006, she published a book and got outed in a UK paper . Life as she knew it crumpled.
18. Slide 20: “…I lost all trust in dating, and men in general, removing myself from the dating arena entirely. The months after my 'outing' in the press were spent mostly on my own - ironic for such a previously 'active' sex diarist.” Zoe changed her job, moved to the States, and continues to blog, but her dating life is forever colored—badly-- by her fame.
19. Slide 21: Provoking questions: Are women who blog about their sex lives punished for being’ sluts’ ? Is a guy writing about his coke habit okay, but a woman writing about sexuality isn’t? Are we all sex-phobic? How could this story be different?
20. Slide 22: Making your narrative work: Melissa  Gira Grant, Rachael Kramer Bussel, Rex  Sorgatz, Nick Douglas
21. Slide 23: Melissa Gira Grant Blogger, feminist, sex worker advocate, former sex worker. “No one can blackmail you with the truth.”
22. Slide 24: Rachel Kramer Bussel : Writer, editor, cupcake maven, event impresario, performer “Once you get used to sharing in a certain way, whether it's via blog or Twitter, and you do add a level of openness, it's hard to back down from that without people thinking something is wrong.”
23. Slide 25: Rex Sorgatz, Blogger, author of NY Magazine’s The Microfame Game “Countless other people are trying to manufacture microfame, over and over again.”
24. Slide 26: Nick Douglas Writer, comic, performer, twitterer “…A professional writer can't overshare, they can only waste good material or put something out there before it's polished enough”
25. Slide 27: So how do you strike a balance between oversharing and transparency? Observations….
26. Slide 28: It helps to have a process What is the agreement you make with yourself about your narrative? •Don’t post in anger •Don’t blog drunk •Is fisking your art form? •Do you snark, bigtime? •How much do you share?
27. Slide 29: Create Your Narrative  • Build strong public persona/image on the  web • You are what you write or link to • Comment and reblog • Build relationships online and IRL • Be consistent in your presentation
28. Slide 30: Monitor chatter  • Egosurf: What are they saying about you? • Google News alerts – comprehensive (web,  groups, news) • Search your name, domain and email  address • Technorati linking
29. Slide 31: Audience feeds on you • Communities want to help or may tear you  down • Mob mentality/piling on • If you get into conflict, don’t keep replying – you’re building content for the search engines • Raise your hands and step away from the  computer
30. Slide 32: Pick your Platforms • Function follows form – Some platforms are more conducive to  discussion, finding shared interests than others  (Livejournal, Tumblr) – Some are better at protecting privacy and  limiting discussion to friends (i.e locking posts  on WordPress, entire blogs on Blogger), – Real time: Twitter, FriendFeed
31. Slide 33: Privacy • NEVER give out personal identifiable  information • Use a proxy server so site owner can’t  analyze where you’re coming from • Moderate comments • Block users and IPs? • Don’t let Google index you • Get out of the cache
32. Slide 34: Turning it back to you • How do you manage transparency ? • Do you WANT to be transparent? • Is this generational?
33. Slide 35: References \"Exposed\" by Emily Gould Xeni Jardin http://tinyurl.com/3tfuxs Personal site: http://xeni.net/ Emily Gould \"That Violet Blue thing\" http://www.emilymagazine.com/ http://boingboing.net/2008/07/01/that‐ violet‐blue‐thi.html Julia Allison http://www.juliaallison.com/ \"Lessons Learned\" http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/18/less ons‐learned.html Jakob Lodwick http://jakoblodwick.com/ Violet Blue Personal site: http://www.tinynibbles.com Reblogging Julia http://baugher.tumblr.com/ Zoe Margolis Girl with a One Track Mind \"The Dangers of Blogger Love http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/ by Joshua David Stein http://tinyurl.com/4qrkn5
34. Slide 36: References Melissa Gira Livejournal http://www.melissagira.com/ http://www.livejournal.com Rachel Kramer Bussel Tumblr http://rachelkramerbussel.com/ http://www.tumblr.com Rex Sorgatz Wordpress http://www.fimoculous.com/ http://www.wordpress.org \"The Microfame Game and the New Rules  Proxify of Internet Celebrity\" by Rex Sorgatz http://www.proxify.org http://nymag.com/news/media/47958/ Tor Project Friendfeed http://www.torproject.org/ http://www.friendfeed.com
35. Slide 37: Contact Us Susan Mernit www.susanmernit.com mernit@gmail.com Viviane www.thesexcarnival.com viviane212@gmail.com