Thursday, July 10, 2008

Oh, man. See, this is why I’m not sure I want to be any more famous than I am. The New York Times ran an article this week about the fact that all links and references to sex writer Violet Blue have been systematically removed from the website Boing Boing. (Need a password? Use one of these.)

This isn’t recent news, and I’m not sure why the NYT decided to talk about it now. But they did, and they speculated that the “unpublishing” happened because of a personal issue between Violet Blue and one of the site’s contributors, Xeni Jardin. I myself do not know Ms. Jardin, and I have only an electronic acquaintance with Ms. Blue. So I do not have any idea what really happened there. Nor do I think it’s any of my business. But then, I don’t really think it’s anyone’s business.

Granted, the writer also posed – but did not answer – a few token questions about the responsibilities of bloggers, which is not an uninteresting subject. But overall, the whole thing just felt really gossipy to me. Oscar Wilde once said the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. I know what he meant, and I often enjoy my tiny bit of celebrity-dom. But I also know I would hate it if my private affairs were being commented on in the bloody New York Times. Luckily, that doesn't seem like something that's likely to happen.

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