May 30, 1998

Dear Digital Diary: Oops!

By SHARON McDONNELL

t's a bit of an oxymoron, the Internet diary, and some would-be Anais Nins eager to bare their souls in this most public of forums are finding diaries can indeed have their downsides when the wrong people read them.

As a result, many of the hundreds of online diarists are using various devices for self-protection, such as writing under pseudonyms, omitting or changing the names of employers and acquaintances, even posting stern stay-away warnings to people they know who find them. At the same time, many diaries maintain discussion forums, archives, lists of favorite entries -- even mailing lists to alert the faithful the latest entry is hot off the presses -- in the come-hither, go-away fashion which has come to typify the online world.

Some diarists even wince from brushes with censorship. Terry Baker, a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, digital artist and photographer, got into trouble with his small local Internet service provider when they received a threat of legal action over an entry.

Art from The Daily Epiphany site

Baker, whose terrapin dream is a poignant, often poetic chronicle of working and enjoying life while coping with HIV, posted an entry identifying a man who had sent him a series of vicious e-mail messages. He also posted the last message, which noted, "I'll be above ground and vertical long after your AIDS-ridden carcass has bitten the dust" in his late December entry. When Baker, who contracted HIV from intravenous drug use over a decade ago, originally complained to his ISP and that of the sender, another diarist, he heard it was "iffy" whether the messages were harassment. But this time, he was asked to take down the "offending" page.

"It's made me wary, but hasn't changed what I write and how I write," said Baker, 40, who later blanked out the man's identity in the journal he has kept since 1996. "This is not revelation for sensation's sake -- it's not Jerry Springer. When I tested positive in 1989, I had to talk about it -- it would kill me if I didn't."

One employer even muttered darkly about an online diary when its writer was asked to resign about six months ago, although he wrote under a pseudonym. The software firm in Leeds, England, skewered as Control Freaks Unlimited -- ruled by golf-playing "corporate trolls" with penchants for words like "incentivisation" -- spoke about "lawyers and libel," said Nigel Richardson in an e-mail interview, although he admitted it was not the only reason given for the request to resign.

"If you want to be pseudonymous, use a search engine to make sure that any links to your pages do not use your real name," warned Richardson, 40, who suspects this snafu unmasked him as the melancholy mid-life crisis sufferer armed with a mordant wit behind Nicholas E. Grinder's World of Elegance and Sophistication. "Watch out for fellow Internet users at the office, especially if they have a grudge against you. Assume the worst." Above all, online admonitions to go away show a naive unfounded faith that the unwanted will obediently skulk away, Richardson advised.

For example, "If you know me in person, please go away," which is the official welcome at Tracing, the anonymous diary of a British-born Chinese architect at a Manhattan firm. The writer, A., 25, has kept her diary secret from family and friends for nearly two years, telling only her husband.

"I write in such a way that I'd be comfortable with anyone in the world reading it. But I'm not comfortable with people knowing more about me than I know about them -- not strangers, but people I'm forced to deal with in my daily life," said A. Like other diarists -- who often call themselves "journalists" -- she enjoys how a diary organizes experience and forces self-reflection. "When I started, I felt like I was joining a conversation," she said, referring to the insular community of diarists, who read each other regularly, allude to others' diaries in their own, and congregate in "web-rings," linked collections of similar sites which are easy to navigate. A., in fact, maintains Often, a web-ring of diaries with nearly daily updates from their authors.

Noting an online diary immediately catapults you into public person status, Bill Chance, 41, an environmental chemist in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb, said, "It's a shock to run into people on the street who are talking about something you know you didn't tell them -- they must have read it in your diary." Chance, who writes a great deal about his two sons, 6 and 7, and includes their photos, has watched his printed diary pages circulate among parents at his children's soccer games. In The Daily Epiphany, marked by its thoughtful, finely tuned observations on family life and visits to places like the Oklahoma City bombing site -- where teddy bears and other toys stuck on the fence are reminders of the many children who died -- he omits his employer's name and issues friends and relatives wouldn't like aired.

"I'm going to print it and give it to my kids when they're teen-agers," said Chance, who hasn't missed a day since July 1996. Some teen-age writers have found their diaries taken down by the ultimate censors: Mom and Dad, who were repelled by the way dirty family laundry was aired in public, said Catherine de Cuir, the guide to The Mining Company's Journals section, which includes links to many online diaries.

But despite problems writing for audiences which often are more intrusive and noisy than one would wish, many diarists plan to keep wearing their hearts on their digital sleeves.

"It's raised my self-esteem and become a huge part of my life. I'm really shy in real life. Besides, the Beats would be doing this," says Baker, who says Allen Ginsberg was an inspiration. "Before this, secrets were my life."

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• Terrapin dream

• Nicholas E. Grinder's World of Elegance and Sophistication

• Tracing

• Often

• The Daily Epiphany

• The Mining Company's Journals section

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