Backposting dilemma

[garote]

I woke up about an hour ago with my mind awash in memories of my UCSC time, and now I can't get back to sleep because I've run into a dilemma:

I asked myself: why would I post these old entries into a public journal? And I got back two answers:

1. The other people involved might enjoy remembering these past events I shared with them,
2. The material itself is an interesting story

But here's the problem. The portions of it that make the most interesting reading in hindsight are also the portions that are potentially the most embarrassing for others to have made public.

So why don't I simply ask the people involved in the potentially embarrassing bits if they mind this public posting? Because it'd be impossible to locate those people today, and in some cases, I don't even want to locate them. Nor they me.

I could try to have it both ways and half-anonymize the writing, but it would get confusing, and anyone directly involved would probably be able to decipher who is who anyway.

So that means I'd have to anonymize the whole thing, change the names around completely, and even obscure details that would identify the participants. This would cease to be a "trip down memory lane" for anyone but me, and the only reason that would justify posting it publicly is it's appeal as a work of fiction.

But you know what? As a work of fiction, it lies mostly between boring details and explicit erotica, like some overlong Archie & Pals fan-fiction. Sure there are a few keen observations and a few jokes, and some nice descriptions of breasts, but seriously, who'd want to wade through the rest of this tripe to find them?

I don't know. I've got this huge mass of writing and some of it is very good, but I don't know what it's good for. Maybe ten years isn't long enough. Maybe it will all have to remain buried.

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[graue.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think I'm where you were 10 years ago. I have a private journal pushing 500K words and no idea when, or if, or how, I could show it to anyone else.

What I have done is excerpted bits from time to time, edited them, and shown people... Would it make sense for you to do that?

[garote]

I would do that if the stories told by the entries weren't in such a long form. If I whittled it down to pieces (and I've done a lot of whittling already), I get the feeling that it would lose the sense of "place" that it conveys. :/

I'm probably overthinking this, as usual...

[ex-zeugma416.livejournal.com]

Wow, I can see how that could be a hard call... Basically, I would say that for the most part, any potential problems would be headed off by the obscurity of this page (i.e., only your friends read it). I mean, even though it's technically public and searchable, nobody is really going to find "their" material unless they're already tuning in to what you're doing and looking for it. Particularly if you omit last names. IANAL, but my advice would be to do just that much as a start -- and if you're going to post anything that could construed as libelous (e.g., someone you knew committed a crime and you knew about it, but they got away with it and there's no proof in the universe apart from your journal) then definitely change the names and two or three of the identifying details, including "connecting people." That should cover you. Remember that defamation law only applies to /false/ statements about another person, which in practice also means statements that can be construed as false because no positive proof exists.

You would still be exposed to privacy claims, but is anyone really going to sue you for revealing that they slept around back in college? Especially if a person is identified by first name only? There's just no real way of tracing it back to a specific individual. Even if they were upset enough to take you to court, after seeing "their" story on your page, they wouldn't have a case, and only an idiot lawyer would take it on.

And the other thing is, backdated entries on LJ are not exactly easy to access. One would really have to be looking to find it. And that's a rather far-fetched scenario in most cases. Probably most of these people have almost completely forgotten about you -- you've become "remember that guy, the one who did Rocky Horror, what was his name? Eric? Gary?"

In sum, so long as you take care to not publish anything that is likely to seriously piss off anyone you know is reading, and take the steps above, you ought to be fine!

But again, I'm no legal expert.

[garote]

That is very, very good advice. Thank you!

[ex-zeugma416.livejournal.com]

You bet! As it happens, I just thoroughly refreshed my memory of libel and privacy law as they pertain to publishing and reporting, as part of my re-entry to journalism -- 2003 was the last time I wrote an article that involved reporting, so I needed to learn everything all over again.

[aquestrian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I say post. As long as none of it reveals anything illegal, I doubt anyone's going to give a tinker's toohooley about you talking about their sexual exploits in college. Hell, didn't we all sleep around in college? And heck, we'll probably just think the person you're talking about is a stud.

Besides, I like good descriptions of breasts. That's hard to find these days.

[garote]

Tinker's toohooley .... that's ... an elf's butt?

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

As someone who may be featured, I say let it all hang out. If anything, we're all gaining an insight to your version of events - most of us have a pretty good idea of the basics of what was happening in college. It's also very likely that most people you talk about won't ever read it, or know it exists online. I'm curious to read more!

[garote]

Yeah... the only scenario that gives me pause is that of some old friend of mine, or friend of a friend, wandering across these entries and getting bent out of shape. It's a pretty unlikely scenario.