Blogging is a fun hobby. I get to say whatever I please and some folks find my rants interesting enough to read and comment on. It's a good gig. However, like many other personal finance bloggers I choose to write my posts under a pseudonym: Shadox. I chose to use that specific pseudonym because it was the name I used for one of my characters in a massively multiplayer online game. But never mind that. Let me tell you why I choose to blog anonymously:
Honesty - I am an executive with a high-tech start-up. If I wrote under my own name I would need to seriously watch what it is that I write about. I would also not feel comfortable being completely honest in my blog posts. Hiding behind my nom-de-guerre gives me the freedom to be both honest and to write about any topic which crosses my mind. This, after all, is the only reason writing this blog is worth doing in the first place.
Career - I shudder when I see what some people put on their online profiles. I am extremely careful about how I manage my online persona, knowing full well that any potential employer, business partner or employee could Google my name and find out everything people are saying about me online. No embarrassing pictures of me online (well, to my knowledge, at least). Google is forever... once you put something out there on the net you can never take it back. I am very conscious of this.
Privacy - by its very nature, personal finance is... personal. I would like to have the ability to talk about my personal financial situation without worrying that this information could be used against me.
Those seem like good enough reasons to me. What do you think?
Here are some posts from other PF bloggers who blog anonymously:
Frugal Zeitgeist talks about what happens when school fund raisers go the office. You know, I hate these about as much as I hate signing those stupid birthday cards for everyone in the office. We have 40 people working for our company, so it's about once a week I need to come up with some witty remark. Birthdays should be banned. Incidentally, my birthday is next week.
Silicon Valley Blogger notes that entrepreneurs think differently. Yup. More often than not they have to ignore everyone's advice and start that business anyway. They also pretty much HAVE to be hopelessly optimistic.
Check out these PF blog carnivals in which I particiapted over the past week: Carnival of Personal Finance; Festival of Frugality; and Money Hacks Carnival.
5 comments:
Thanks for the link, my friend. Happy early birthday. That's the wittiest you'll get from me today.
Once upon a time, I had a blog that many people in my real life knew about. I eventually deleted it: it was too risky and there was too much I couldn't say. Anonymity suits me much better. I went to a PF blogcon here in New York a year or so ago with three other anonymous PF bloggers. We had a great time and never did learn each other's names.
anonymously.
It's such a rare occasion to see a misspelling or improper grammar here, that the occasional mistake sticks out like a sore thumb.
Keep up the excellent work.
Use an alias. That way you can add some extra branding to your site.
Frugal - thank you! No wit necessary, nor expected... :-)
Anonymous - ouchy (!) and thank you.
I Need Money - hmmmm... I thought that Shadox was an alias... It is usually considered good manners to read a post before leaving a comment on it (I apologize in advance if I misunderstood your comment).
I guess I'm pretty much screwed with my persona. My true identity is handily available now and with just enough research, I'm out in the open.
If I'm going to get a job sometime in the future, I'm hoping the employer will either ignore this aspect of who I am, or will take it as an asset.
The first thing that pops under my name is my Linked In profile though, so I hope that helps neutralize whatever effect my blogging does on my background. :)
Now I'll just have to watch what I say!
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