Avoiding the Emily Gould
Effect: Blogging, Narrative &
Transparency
Susan Mernit & Viviane
September 26, 2008

“Of course, some people have
always been more naturally
inclined toward oversharing than
others. Technology just
enables us to overshare on a
different scale.”
.—Emily Gould, Exposed, NYTimes
magazine, August 2008

What is this talk about?
•Putting your sex & relationships
stuff out on the web
•Oversharing vs. Transparency
•How the real time web changes
things

The internet is forever
• If you’re thinned skinned or sensitive, don’t
do it.
• What if a date or prospective employer
Googles you and finds your writing?
• What is the agreement with your partner
or the person you’re dating?
• How will you feel when you read your
narrative years from now?

Case Studies in Notoriety: Julia
Allison, Emily Gould, Xeni Jardin, Zoe
Margolis

Julia Allison, 2007: Girl about town heads to
Silicon Valley….

Julia vblogs
with the start
up boyfriend,
hits high tech
parties, twitters
about
clothes…they
break up…in
public.
Reblogging
Julia happens.

What do you get when people laugh at you?
Attention.
•146,000 Google links
•500,000 + views on YouTube

Julia Allison,
August 2008:
The Paris Hilton
of the Net
gets the cover of
Wired, sets
records for
newsstand
copies sold.

2006: Emily
Gould starts
blogging about
her dating life in
gossip rag
Gawker—and
tells everyone in
the office about
dating a co-
worker.

“I’m going to try
to never write
about you,” I
whispered to the
boy whose
shoulder my
head was on two
nights ago.
…Oops.”

“I had made my existence so
public in such a strange way,
and I wanted to take it all back,
but in order to do that I’d have
to destroy the entire Internet.”
--Emily Gould, Exposed, NYTimes

2008: Emily
Gould sells a
cover story to
the New York
Times on her
blogging regrets,
gets 1, 216
comments and a
reported $1MM
book deal

2008: BoingBoing editor Xeni Jardin
removes blogger Violet Blue’s posts from
BoingBoing—1,500 people comment.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLjfJgrqIU

Xeni tells the LA Times:
“I just wanted to take
this material down for a
host of reasons that I
don’t want to talk about
in public…”
Violet Blue responds
on YouTube—quoting
Metafilter
commenters.

Show first part of Violet Blue video
on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
gJLjfJgrqIU

Girl with a One Track Mind
Zoe Margolis first blogged about sex in
2003. In 2006, she published a book and
got outed in a UK paper . Life as she knew
it crumpled.

“…I lost all trust in dating, and men in
general, removing myself from the
dating arena entirely. The months
after my 'outing' in the press were
spent mostly on my own - ironic for
such a previously 'active' sex diarist.”
Zoe changed her job, moved to the
States, and continues to blog, but her
dating life is forever colored—badly-- by
her fame.

Provoking questions:
Are women who blog about their sex lives
punished for being’ sluts’ ?
Is a guy writing about his coke habit okay, but
a woman writing about sexuality isn’t?
Are we all sex-phobic?
How could this story be different?

Making your narrative work: Melissa
Gira Grant, Rachael Kramer Bussel, Rex
Sorgatz, Nick Douglas

Melissa Gira
Grant
Blogger,
feminist, sex
worker
advocate,
former sex
worker.
“No one can
blackmail you
with the truth.”

Rachel Kramer Bussel
:
Writer, editor, cupcake
maven, event
impresario, performer
“Once you get used to sharing
in a certain way, whether it's
via blog or Twitter, and you do
add a level of openness, it's
hard to back down from that
without people thinking
something is wrong.”

Rex Sorgatz, Blogger, author of NY Magazine’s
The Microfame Game
“Countless other people are trying to
manufacture microfame, over and over again.”

Nick Douglas
Writer, comic,
performer, twitterer
“…A professional writer
can't overshare, they
can only waste good
material or put
something out there
before it's polished
enough”

So how do you strike a
balance between
oversharing and
transparency?
Observations….

It helps to have a process
What is the agreement you make
with yourself about your narrative?
•Don’t post in anger
•Don’t blog drunk
•Is fisking your art form?
•Do you snark, bigtime?
•How much do you share?

Create Your Narrative
• Build strong public persona/image on the
web
• You are what you write or link to
• Comment and reblog
• Build relationships online and IRL
• Be consistent in your presentation

Monitor chatter
• Egosurf: What are they saying about you?
• Google News alerts – comprehensive (web,
groups, news)
• Search your name, domain and email
address
• Technorati linking

Audience feeds on you
• Communities want to help or may tear you
down
• Mob mentality/piling on
• If you get into conflict, don’t keep replying –
you’re building content for the search engines
• Raise your hands and step away from the
computer

Pick your Platforms
• Function follows form
– Some platforms are more conducive to
discussion, finding shared interests than others
(Livejournal, Tumblr)
– Some are better at protecting privacy and
limiting discussion to friends (i.e locking posts
on WordPress, entire blogs on Blogger),
– Real time: Twitter, FriendFeed

Privacy
• NEVER give out personal identifiable
information
• Use a proxy server so site owner can’t
analyze where you’re coming from
• Moderate comments
• Block users and IPs?
• Don’t let Google index you
• Get out of the cache

Turning it back to you
• How do you manage transparency ?
• Do you WANT to be transparent?
• Is this generational?

References
\"Exposed\" by Emily Gould Xeni Jardin
http://tinyurl.com/3tfuxs Personal site: http://xeni.net/
Emily Gould \"That Violet Blue thing\"
http://www.emilymagazine.com/ http://boingboing.net/2008/07/01/that‐
violet‐blue‐thi.html
Julia Allison
http://www.juliaallison.com/ \"Lessons Learned\"
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/18/less
ons‐learned.html
Jakob Lodwick
http://jakoblodwick.com/ Violet Blue
Personal site: http://www.tinynibbles.com
Reblogging Julia
http://baugher.tumblr.com/ Zoe Margolis
Girl with a One Track Mind
\"The Dangers of Blogger Love http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/
by Joshua David Stein
http://tinyurl.com/4qrkn5

References
Melissa Gira Livejournal
http://www.melissagira.com/ http://www.livejournal.com
Rachel Kramer Bussel Tumblr
http://rachelkramerbussel.com/ http://www.tumblr.com
Rex Sorgatz Wordpress
http://www.fimoculous.com/ http://www.wordpress.org
\"The Microfame Game and the New Rules Proxify
of Internet Celebrity\" by Rex Sorgatz http://www.proxify.org
http://nymag.com/news/media/47958/
Tor Project
Friendfeed http://www.torproject.org/
http://www.friendfeed.com

Contact Us
Susan Mernit
www.susanmernit.com
mernit@gmail.com
Viviane
www.thesexcarnival.com
viviane212@gmail.com