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I'm going to preface this by acknowledging that nothing I'm saying here is new. I'm sure everything I'm going to say has been said elsewhere, possibly and probably by people who are smarter and more eloquent than I am. But I'm going to say it anyway, because maybe more people need to be saying it. Maybe if we keep repeating it, it'll make a dent in the amount of people who, for some reason, subscribe to the belief that you must list all of your personal information on your socials for any stranger to see in order to be considered trustworthy or Valid™.
No one on the internet needs to know your personal information. No one needs to know your real name, your location (vague or otherwise), your race, gender, sexuality, diagnoses, age, blood type, etc.
Now I understand how this post coming immediately after my intro post can appear hypocritical, given how much info I provided about myself. But if you pay attention to the info I gave, I intentionally kept things vague while also being informative.
For example, I said I'm disabled and chronically ill. I didn't tell you my diagnoses. I said I'm mentally ill, and the only thing I specified is that I have things that aren't just depression and anxiety, so you may infer that I have something 'more serious' (not that those illnesses aren't serious!), but have no idea what they are.
I am also an adult. I gave my age, something I did not have to do, because I wanted to and I have the understanding that there are consequences to giving out my age. In my case, I shared it so that other people here who might find my blog will know if we are around the same age and therefore more likely to get along. I also shared it so if there are minors here who are not comfortable following a blog run by an adult, they can avoid me.
But when it comes to such minors, there is no reason for them to share their age. I might even go so far as to say they shouldn't even declare publicly that they're a minor at all, because it might attract the attention of predators. Hypothetical minor could say something like "I'm a minor, don't follow me if you're older than 18". What is to stop a predator from lying?( Read more... )
No one on the internet needs to know your personal information. No one needs to know your real name, your location (vague or otherwise), your race, gender, sexuality, diagnoses, age, blood type, etc.
Now I understand how this post coming immediately after my intro post can appear hypocritical, given how much info I provided about myself. But if you pay attention to the info I gave, I intentionally kept things vague while also being informative.
For example, I said I'm disabled and chronically ill. I didn't tell you my diagnoses. I said I'm mentally ill, and the only thing I specified is that I have things that aren't just depression and anxiety, so you may infer that I have something 'more serious' (not that those illnesses aren't serious!), but have no idea what they are.
I am also an adult. I gave my age, something I did not have to do, because I wanted to and I have the understanding that there are consequences to giving out my age. In my case, I shared it so that other people here who might find my blog will know if we are around the same age and therefore more likely to get along. I also shared it so if there are minors here who are not comfortable following a blog run by an adult, they can avoid me.
But when it comes to such minors, there is no reason for them to share their age. I might even go so far as to say they shouldn't even declare publicly that they're a minor at all, because it might attract the attention of predators. Hypothetical minor could say something like "I'm a minor, don't follow me if you're older than 18". What is to stop a predator from lying?( Read more... )
