Yesterday I had the not so enjoyable experience of finding out what happens when someone you know in real life happens to read something that you've written about them on the internet. The person in question was the subject of the second half of my daylog on May 24, 2004. Needless to say they weren't impressed with what they read. Comments that I received were 'Why would you write that?' and 'I don't want people reading that'. This may not seem that threatening but combine this with a very high pitched voice and a person who is under 1.5 metres and it gets mighty scary. It is actually the angriest I've ever seen her.
I wasn't particularly prepared this as I walked through the door so I quickly agreed to remove it and then really haven't talked to her since (this isn't that hard as we have different timetables and she does completely different courses). Now you may be saying to yourself, 'wait, that writeup is still there - you lied to her'. Well actually the copy they read was at another site, where I have a blog of sorts which someone else (who happens to be the subject of my May 2, 2004 daylog, which was also posted at the site but deleted before she had a chance to read it) happened to find. Now at this site it is deleted...
I agreed to remove it because I hate confrontation and this was the easiest way to extract myself from the situation. But there is part of me that wished that I stood up and said no. These are my feelings. If you can't accept this then tough shit. You do not have a right to not be offended.
This whole incident made me think about the fact that this maybe a delusion we have regarding the world. In order to be able to sleep at night, we believe that our friends don't say things about our behind your back. Because we are unable to see what others see, we can't believe that they would think or say anything bad about us. Sometimes I actually do wonder what people say about me. But then we just start getting paranoid and that's never good. For me I hate knowing what others think. I'll turn up my music just to avoid hearing other people's conversations if there a chance of them talking about me.
Maybe the real anger for the subject of my daylog was not that I wrote it but what I wrote. I have to admit that what I wrote was not the nicest things, but this is how I see the situation. Another person of course could see things completely differently.