Blogger Self Censorship
In person peoples views are far more open and authentic, even more so than the openness of their blog entries. This is simply because the risks are lower. That’s all it is, the risks. The risks are:
- looking bad (dumb, stupid, ignorant etc)
- offending others (customers, minority groups etc)
- being logged on the electronic record for all history.
There’s probably a bigger list but this is enough for this post. So the driver of this self censorship is reputation risk at the surface of it. Deeper though, the driver is survival. Everything stems from survival. Surviving and being happy are foundations of human behaviour and action.
Society demands some censorship to prevent laws, morals and ethics being crushed by authenticity. The reality is everyone sensors themselves when they write. If you wrote everything that little voice in your head said you would be an extreme blogger, the basejumper of blogging. 1 in 1000 posts would kill you. You would be popular, unpopular and extremely interesting all at the same time. That sort of volatility would make you feel really alive, but it might just kill you as well.
That little voice in your head full of unprintable ideas, likes and dislikes is the volatile version of what ends up as sensibly censored blog posts and musings.
