The very worst case example for maintaining the guise of anonymous is the revolutionaries who were imprisoned, tortured and killed for writing their thoughts and ideas for all the world to see. The gray zone that I don’t want to argue about is wikileaks. The simplest example is a corporate whistleblower.

As someone who uses her real name on anything and everything that she does, I still understand the reason for anonymous. I am the same person online that I am in real life. For personal or professional reasons, some people need masks to hide or reveal who they truly are.

This is my domain and I do not tolerate people coming here to fling mud on my walls. What I allow to remain posted is my responsibility and my privilege. The media sites that are the target of the petition against anonymous have a choice to be or not be breeding grounds for hate. Banning anonymous will not make the conversations more or less civil. Anonymous might not make that insightful comment or reveal that unspoken truth. Anonymous might simply wear new masks. Banning anonymous is not a shortcut to the difficult and thankless task of moderating discussions.

* Uggs and shorts at Pilot on Cumberland. #spring about 16 hours ago
* Blazer, cut-offs and flip-flops on campus. #spring about 16 hours ago
* This room is filled with middle-aged women and the temperature is about 80F. about 15 hours ago
* Knox County represented at DC Race to the Top presentations by Dr. McIntyre. No other TN Supers there. about 15 hours ago
* Great Schools Partnership changing name to reflect that they are a private foundation. Board asking why he believes he can raise $. about 15 hours ago
* This conversation about teachers’ pensions is cold. Almost brutal. about 14 hours ago
* When one specific board member speaks, my eye twitch starts up again. about 14 hours ago
* Love the board member who thinks one ream of paper a month is going to make a difference in the budget. about 14 hours ago
* Gah! Why don’t you explain how the fees are used so that parents pay them? about 14 hours ago
* All the teachers in here are shaking their heads in disagreement with this budget discussion. Were they excluded from the planning? about 14 hours ago
* Was he allowed to attend his child’s high school orientation or did he just hear about it second hand? about 14 hours ago
* Got bored. Filled out my census form. Same person still talking. about 13 hours ago
* No new textbooks this year. Maintenance being cut. Teachers being cut. They “hope” they won’t have to cut central office staff. about 13 hours ago
* Yes! Karen Carson gets it! Tell how money is used. about 13 hours ago
* Trustees and 3 million dollar fee topic of extensive complaint. about 13 hours ago
* Please stop grandstanding and let the meeting finish. about 13 hours ago
* I just sent an e-mail to the person sitting beside me. #easilyamused about 13 hours ago
* The a/c just clicked on. I’m guessing that is to wake everyone. about 12 hours ago
* I’m going to steal @lolaalapo’s cooler full of food. about 12 hours ago
* I’m hungry and we are talking about the results of the 2010 census. Please move forward. about 12 hours ago
* Schools should take turns running a refreshment table in the hall during these meetings. about 12 hours ago
* If they interrupt Mr. Milligan, there will be a riot in this room. about 12 hours ago
* After 3 1/2 hours of School Board budget meeting, the 13-y-o informed me that he has a birthday party immediately after school tomorrow. about 11 hours ago

“What I’m finding in Memphis, because I’m doing the same thing here I do at home and that’s just talk to people that I don’t know, yes, there is a level of polite but I’m finding that Memphians also will take their bullshitometer out and hit you in the head with it if they think it is necessary. I think Nashville, in some ways, uses their polite “voices” more than Memphians do. And Hoots, well that’s a whole other can of Spam but Memphis folks tend to just call it when they see it.

And they do it with a grin.”

Read the whole thing and know that I consider Memphis my home.

One dimensional people never talk about what a married couple does when they have ten minutes alone. They don’t voice opinions that are different from the people around them. One dimensional people don’t take risks or change their plans. They never need anti-depressants. One dimensional people are more interested in how they appear to others than in how they feel.

One dimensional people’s children never have bad skin or psychological growing pains. Their children may be six or seven years old, but they are handsome young men and mature young women. One dimensional people’s children never do stupid stuff. Their children are the very best at all academic and athletic endeavors.

Our family is composed of real, 3-dimensional human beings. People who know our family in real life know that we are a big,*loud, messy family who love each other completely. We learn from our mistakes instead of denying them. We care about our schools, community and world. We don’t ignore the things that are broken. We share opinions and ideas in an effort to cooperatively make things better. We are able to laugh when we fall down and kick ourselves if we don’t get back up again. Being the same person when someone else is looking, as who you are when you are alone, is quite liberating.

When I hear about one-dimensional people intimidating people who are speaking out to make things better, it makes me angry. The courage and conviction to speak will do far more good than superficial pretentiousness. Don’t hide yourself from the world. One-dimensional people have equally flat and phony relationships with others. One dimensional people want to flatten you into a cartoon caricature of a person. They want you to be one-dimensional. You’re better than that. You have opinions and ideas and a desire to grow as a person. You care about people other than yourself. You have a real personality. You are 3-dimensional.

*Some of us are louder than others.

I thought the Motrin ads were funny. I wasn’t offended, but I watched the Twitter mob gathering torches and pitchforks. Entertaining? Maybe in a train wreck sort of way. It should have been educational for anyone who doesn’t think their brand needs to be interacting with consumers. I like to think that kind of energy can be channeled to do good. I know that social media has helped me.

It looks like this year’s topics of introspection are cocktail parties and swag. The posts coming out of BlogHer so far include:
Not all bloggers are like that
In Which I Pi** Off Lots of People and Do Not Care

The swag behavior is childish and may or may not have been exaggerated by the enormous crowd of people that attend BlogHer. From the descriptions I’m hearing, it sounds like the day after Thanksgiving sales. Event sponsors brought swag that was far better than the pencils I get excited about at Knoxville’s First Day Festival. I drooled at the pictures of what women were getting in their goody bags. I could have filled the children’s stockings with all those trinkets. Everyone just got caught up in all the excitement of BlogHer. Maybe crowd control will reduce some of the problem. Maybe lobby tickets were a mistake. Most likely, women will have higher expectations for themselves and others in the future. I believe in women enough to know it will not be a problem next year.

Then, there is the desire to band together and protect any fellow blogger who has been wronged. This is one of the good things about who we are. Please don’t make it into an us vs them. Don’t get mad at Nikon. We should all be lucky enough to have one of their cameras. Don’t get mad at babies. Tiny babies are completely portable and when they are with their personal feeding/soothing device, there is no wailing or destruction. It’s only when they get mobile that they damage property. We can support each other without having to make someone a bad guy.

I don’t want to call myself some politically correct thing like “woman who blogs” or “online diarist” or whatever name people are going to create out of this. I am a Mom. I blog. If someone asks me to review a product that fits in my life, I will do so if there are no strings attached. I would rather write about my life, my family and whatever interests me. I will not do paid posts, but I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see behind the scenes of where my food comes from or have a conversation with elected officials. I write about focused topics on other sites. I’m not paid for what I write over there either. I write e-mails to politicians. That doesn’t make me a lobbyist. It all falls under the giant umbrella of being a mom who has ideas, opinions and a life that she likes to write about. There are lots of Mommy bloggers who are not like that. There are lots of us who haven’t stopped telling our stories. We don’t need a new label. We just need to remember who we really are.

What nobody talks about are the families who are struggling to scrape together the money to save their homes from foreclosure. The debt that increases exponentially every single day with legal fees and penalties. The stress and anxiety at not knowing what horror the next day will bring. It is implicitly encouraged on the “property watch” blogs that you should check out these properties and bid on them. Checking them out means parking in front of the house and staring, pointing and taking pictures. It means getting out of your car and wandering around on property that still belongs to the family living there. It means strangers walking up to children playing in their yard and asking them questions about their home. It seems to make people think that it is okay to knock on someone’s door and ask if you can come inside and look around. These families are still trying to save their homes. They are financially wounded and struggling to survive. Foreclosure bloggers and their supporters are vultures. They are parasites who prey upon the defenseless. Grave robbers.

We watched in helpless horror as a happy family in our neighborhood lost their home. When they ran out of options and the will to fight, they moved into assisted housing. We tried to keep in touch with them, but as they began to change and adapt to their new lifestyle, the play dates for our children quickly stopped happening. Losing their home changed everything about that family. Their marriage ended. Their personalities changed and they are lost forever to the system. The house at the corner of our cove was the home for a multi-generational family. The bank foreclosed and the family left TN to start over again. That house has sat vacant for YEARS. Now it a place for squatters and suspicious activity. Losing the family that belonged there has changed the landscape of our quiet, uneventful cove.

Sometimes, we still dream of a different life. When I do, one thing about my plans never changes. I want to pay off this house and move somewhere else. I want to give this house to someone else who is struggling. It is our lifeboat in the stormy seas and if we survive this storm, I know it can be the refuge for another family.