# Personal blogging as self-imposed oppression

*You Should Start a Blog Right Now!*

Or should you? You can find some blog posts about the [benefits of blogging](https://guzey.com/personal/why-have-a-blog/) but I can't think of many that explore the potential harms. I can think of some reasons why blogging — especially under your real identity — could waste your time, make you a worse thinker, and limit your social and professional opportunities.

**1\. Blogging will give society more influence over your thinking.**

Imagine if any stranger off the street could come and visit your home. How would that change your behavior? Probably you would make sure there is nothing offensive or too personal around, and you'd spend more time making your home look neat and presentable, with your shelves lined with books you feel give a good impression of yourself. A personal blog is like opening a public door to your mind. Do you really think that you won't clean up the contents for the sake of public appearances?

**2\. It will enforce your current beliefs and identity.**

Writing about your beliefs and claims in public will make those a stronger part of your identity. They will stay as obstacles before adopting new views and information, because you have to reconcile the new with your newly-questionable but previously proud content. If you instead keep your thoughts and beliefs anonymous, you can accept all the new information you want without worrying about your old digital garden misleading the public or causing embarrassment.

Learning you were wrong about something:

*   No blog --> Update your beliefs.
*   Yes blog --> Update your beliefs, and all relevant blog posts.

**3\. It will make your beliefs visible.**

If you write about X, people will know what you think of X. This will matter if X is or becomes controversial, and may limit your social and professional opportunities. You will lose opportunities with some people who strongly disagree with you on X. The first impression will already have been made before you meet.

Maybe you write about rationalist views, and your hippie friend will be just barely enough put off that you won't get an invite to their summer parties. Or you have a nice uncle you'd like to spend more time with, but their father was a butcher and you wrote essays about veganism.

If you instead had kept your thinking to yourself, you'd have an easier time reaching out to people you might enjoy as friends, even if you disagree on some important ideas.

**4\. It might make you less interesting.**

The more you've written about yourself and your beliefs, the less room there is for other people to learn about you. This seems especially relevant in dating, where you'll be regrettably often perceived as boring if your life is too open. The less of your story you've published, the more room you have to try different ways to interact with people, even if it's just about how exactly you tell others about your life story or beliefs.

When your life story so far is out there, already authored, that's mostly what you'll get. When it's a mystery, you build it together with the people you spend time with. Maybe in some relationships, this process of mutually learning about each others' values and stories is an important process, where you adapt to each other and build a stronger shared bond?

**5\. Blogging will twist your motivation and demand your time.**

If you want to achieve anything in this world, what other people think of you will matter. Maybe you started a blog to improve your writing and thinking, but as soon as you put your real name on a site, you will feel pressure to build and polish it in order to improve how others perceive you.

A blog will reveal significant information that others will try to use for judging your quality. You'll be compared to other bloggers in quality and quantity, and even the frequency you write with will tell about your diligence.

At worst, your blog will become in your mind your most important presentation of your self. Even in milder cases, you might feel torn about how you should handle your old and future content when your life changes. Will people think weirdly if you don't make any new posts for a while? Should you add a disclaimer that you stopped blogging because your mom got sick and you gave birth to twins? Will your old posts about technical problems make you look silly, now that you're a CTO who is supposed to appear as exemplar? You'll probably find many major and minor nuisances to worry about the more you blog — or even if you don't blog enough!

As long as your personal blog exists, it will beg for your time.

* * *

Don't take this as the truth, but more as an attempt to brainstorm reasons against blogging. Even if you find these arguments against personal blogging convincing, do notice that these issues seem to disappear almost entirely if you blog anonymously or pseudonymously.

Maybe the real good advice is: "You should try pseudonymous blogging"?