I was featured in someone else's blog. I remember watching 'The Social Network' and thinking Mark was such a jerk for blogging about his ex-girl friend. Furthermore like she says 'Internet is not something that you can easily erase, it is written in ink for everyone to see and wonder'. Don't worry, my case isn't so dramatic. My cousin didn't write anything bad about me. He just mentioned some of the things that we chat about but that got me thinking if it is appropriate for people to involve someone else in one's blog.
When you tell a story you can never realy complete it without involving someone you know regardless of what you write. One can write about climate change, environment or some abstract topic without involving people you know to a certain point. But more often than not, people from our lives are always involved in our stories. One would be a fool to think they can write about their life without mentioning the people around them. Even in a imaginative piece, people are inspired by things around them, something someone said or things that happened to him. The people in ones' lives is inherently a part of that story, article or blog for that matter, So one involves them in one's stories, in their articles and in their blogs.
The question is - is that fair? We are the ones who is writing the story, the ones who started the blog, not them so is it fair for us to involve someone else in our blogs? Do they even want to be in the blog? Does he/she approve of you writing about him in your blog? You start a blog, you write about your problems, you thoughts and your opinion so why is someone else who had nothing to do with your decision to start a blog involved in it? Does he even read your blog?
I guess there realy is no problem if one is writing an ode to someone or something funny about the person involved but problems always arises if you are writing less than flattering words about the other person or something that incriminates the person involved like the movie 'The Social Network' for that matter. Furthermore, like in the movie, how is it fair for the person involved to be plastered all over internet without any chance to present their side of the story. And what is to say that just because you put hands to the keyboard first makes your version of it any truer than the other person who doesn't write? It is like mentioning someone or something in an autobiography that the other person would rather have left untold. We have seen it happen often time. I guess one can resort to mentioning only the good parts and steering away from the bad ones but then when have humans been that perfect and how is it fair that you only tell one side of the story? That in itself creates problems.
I suppose one could always ask permission from that particular person but things doesn't always work that way. If you badly want to share an interesting fact but can't find the person, what do you do? Do you publish it without their permission? Or you don't write and miss out giving interesting facts? Furthermore isn't it obvious that the person involved will never approve of a writing that presents him even in a slightly negative way? And which of these things is actually yours to make the decision of? Where is the line where you stop mentioning other people? Telling your side of the story would be only half the story so do you stop in your side of your story or continue even without permission?
I know that by writing this piece my cousin also features in my blog and I think it is so ironic that I couldn't even write about who to involve and who not to involve in my blog without already involving the person who made me think about it in the first place.
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