Messyfilter

melissa:

Tonight I declined Susan Mernit’s invitation to attend her & Viviane’s panel, “Avoiding the Emily Gould Effect” (in San Francisco this weekend). The central issue of the panel is oversharing — and will offer strategies for anyone to use when dealing with their life going more public on the Internet than they intended.

I really didn’t know what to do with Susan’s request, for me to come and to speak from the audience. The issues raised are sure to be very volatile — theoretically, socially, personally — though they very much need to be raised. But do I need to be in the room? To talk back, answer for myself, answer for others? My work is bound up in answering those questions. Would I be there as the gossip from Valleywag, or the girl who pre-emptively gossips about herself?

Sarah Dopp reminded me that part of my approach to managing my profile online is to know when it’s best to let go of how others will respond to my public persona. It was Nick who did this very well, in the course of our breakup. I didn’t respond favorably at all at the time: I saw it as a denial, a cheat. I feel differently now, and I’m sorry for having blamed him for making the fairest of an array of — in that moment — profoundly unfair choices. I know he did the right thing in giving me space to grieve, and rage, and hurt. To tell my own story.

In that spirit, I’ll sit this one out.