Okay, lemme get this straight:
I took a quiz recently that identified me as being the Peanuts character Schroeder. Other bloggers have taken the same test and also been identified as Schroeder. There is already a blogger named Schroeder! Stop the madness already! Maybe Sheckrastos and I oughta be calling ourselves Agador Spartacus and be done with it...
Then, I post a little something yesterday that misidentifies a random commenter on a Times-Picayune article as a citizen journalist blogger known to all us NOLAns who do the posting thing ourselves on our own damn sites, thanks very much. Bayou St John David writes ever so well about that sinking feeling that someone may have just poached your thoughts as well as your identity:
I didn't have time to write anything more, but I've noticed him (or her) in those forums before. I think there might be another similar name on those forums as well. I recently saw the other BSJ (or somebody else with a similar moniker -bayoudavid?) make a comment that bothered me because it sounded almost, but not quite, like something I'd write. Can't remember what it was exactly, but I do remember that 80-90% of it was something I'd have written, but i really didn't like the other 10-20%.
I advised David to head for the Creative Commons website pronto and get one of their nifty little widgets that says my work is all mine, mine, mine and you can't ever but ever use it unless I say so, dammit so that at the very least all his hard work on his sites will be his (shhhyeah, like it isn't already...)and he will have the right to attest this in court. Comments on other blogs are a whole 'nother planet, I realize that, but at least you can be, uhh, master of your domain...heh.
The CC thing is something I've been wanting to do for a while, anyhow, especially since I saw what Holly went through a while back. Picasso once said something about great artists stealing, but stealing somebody's posts and republishing them as your own is criminal...and very, very tacky. Get your own damn blogs, people!
Then again, I don't know who anybody is anymore, period. All of this is starting to make me paranoid. Somebody tell me, please..is this really my blogsite? Does anybody really know if the trees fell in that forest, if they made a sound? Do I need to put my face back on?
8 comments:
I can tell you read Dick, or at least Powers.
Wait 'till you meet Blind Bayou St John the Baptist Elvis Impersonator, BBSJBEI. Talk about self conscious. Geez!
You have what I call innate copy protection. There is no other thread like yours on the matrix.
I con tellll you don'beeleeeeeve me. Still, it is true. I could spot you like a ruby on a dumpster full of diamonds in a jungle full of thieves.
As for the trees falling in New Orleans...I counted 12 during the flood and my nephew scraped 7 off the floor of the convention center a month or so later. I haven't heard a thing about them. I ask myself about this still.
Aside from the fact that my birthstone is turquoise, well, thanks for the praise!
*blushing furiously*
I may have seen the same BayouStJohnDavid imposter -- it was a pretty convincing imposter from the writing. There was at one time a GentillyGirl imposter lurking the NOLA.com pages. So now what -- ranters on NOLA.com who think themselves bloggers are boosting their street cred by posing as real bloggers?
Depends. Are you "really" Schroeder, or are you just commenting as him? ;-)
I think there are folks who are either avid blog readers with similar-type thoughts out there, or they are actually ripping off other bloggers' words but want to do their best not to go all the way into outright plagiarism.
It's just...it's not THAT difficult to get your own blog and start expressing yourself. Maybe what's lacking is a link on nola.com to kick-start it yourself on WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, BlogCity, or any of the other ones out there.
Maybe I'M the nutty one here...
O-M-G!! I *so* thought that was Moldy City's BSJD at NOLA.com! It never crossed my mind that it was someone else with the same name. I remember thinking a number of times that it was a good thing there was at least one voice of reason on those forums.
FWIW, I'm Sophmom at Blogger, Blog-City. WordPress, EZBoard, Yuko and goodness knows how many other places. It's a lot to keep up with but I'm betting the Dangerous One knows how to help us "protect" our screen names, if such a thing can be done.
Also, how did I miss the whole Peanuts thing? It was a rough week at the KSDCo.
Peace, darlin'.
P.S. I'm seeing that at yet another Blogger Blog, I'm no longer allowed to post as Blog-City Sophmom but am now being forced to post as Blogger Sophmom. I think this is something Blogger is doing. At first I thought it was in response to my getting a G-Mail account but I don't think that any more. There was a long discussion of this at my family's Thanksgiving (heavily populated with bonafide Geeks - well, one), at which time I learned that in its early days, Google's motto was "Don't Be Evil". I think they've failed on that. JMHO. Recently, more and more frequently, Google decides where I go and who I "am" online. I'd prefer to make those choices myself.
Feh.
Dotcalm
Hmmm your birthstone is turquoise? You mean it isn't simulated blue-green cubic zirconia like mine apparently is?
Well, it WAS once upon a time, but I lost that stone out of a ring my grandma gave me when I was walking the dog one day.
I'm not really worried about ownership of anything I write, I doubt any of it's marketable. I guess anybody who posts with a name involving a neighborhood should expect to see similar monikers in public forums, all you can do is try to make sure people know the other person's opinions aren't your own.
I recently saw somebody with a similar name to mine (I guess it was BayouStJohn) make some of the same criticisms that I make of the Nagin administration, and corruption and the DBE program, but with none of the restraint.
Restrained criticism? Me? Obviously, I'm not talking about Nagin, just the city's DBE program. I do think that the city will have more corruption, cronyism and graft than it can afford until we acknowledge the extent to which the DBE program has been abused and demand openness and reform. This person wanted to get rid of it altogether, something I don't advocate. I've seen one or two similar postings, and I certainly don't share all of his or her opinions on public housing.
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