Published tonight on medium.com – am still finding my way around the writing space. I find it makes me actually go over my words like 4 or 5 times rather than my typo-ridden blurt here. But anyhow, the real truth behind the origin of the Internet
I am a Smart-Ass
(the Internet was built for me)
I could have just as well written it here. And I just was about to publish and was looking at what I had blogged here– I kind of grumble at some people who write in one place with just a link elsewhere.
This was a post idea that literally came to me in the shower, though I am pretty sure I’ve written parts of this in some aspect here. But it is one of those cases where most of the blogging takes place away from the blog– in my head. There is always more than works itself as I write, and things are moved, chopped, added. But the thought out ones are fun to work with.
The addition tonight was thinking about all of those writing projects I did in Middle and High School, and how my teachers really ate up the ones where I took an existing story and mockified it. I actually still have many of my school reports and papers. Again, my Mom’s presence because she had them all in a box in her garage.
So I knew I still had a copy of my rip on the King Arthur story as The Legend of King Archive and the Drivers of the Round Lot
That was a dangerous potential rat hole as I opened the box in my closet with these memory papers. Not for ant sadness, just that I knew I could lose myself in poking through the old stuff.
But yeah, take a smart-ass kid raised on network TV and MAD magazine, toss him into the internet, and he finds his place in the universe mocking up old movie posters and radio shows in ds106.
Trippy.
If you’re gonna be one, be a nice one! LOL
Your post got me thinking about online identity. I try to stay aware that what I post online gives people the impression of who I am – and so I’m careful to project a certain image. I don’t suppose it’s that much different from the “real” me, just filtered a bit.
I have stopped following some brilliant people because I couldn’t get over the snarkiness and even mean-ness of what they posted online and I wonder what they think they accomplish in that kind of invective. It may generate reaction, but it has a cost, I think. People who read stuff on the internet are the same people who might be (or indeed are) my students, my clients, and my colleagues.
When I first started blogging, I recall posting a few sarcastic posts, partially because it looked to me that ranting was the expectation. But when I saw how I myself reacted to others’ posts that publicly called others out or took people to task in a broad way, I decided that I wanted to take a different tack. It’s a balancing act between being candid and being hurtful.
Like you say, there’s a difference between being a jerk and being a nice smart ass – the best SAs can point out truths that we need to hear in a funny way. I can’t pull that off usually, but I’m glad some people can.
Thanks for sharing Catherine. I honestly stop trying to think of an online identity being different from whatever the opposite is. To me its all merged, and there is no singular identity, all we present are always facets of ourselves, be it online or at a cocktail party. It takes some experience and likely some bad ones as you formulate what you described, its an evolving process.