Recently one of my friends pointed me to the blog of one of my ex-girlfriends, and it has raised a few curoius concerns for me.
I have found that I quite enojoy reading her blog, finding out about what she’s up to, and to some extent soaking up the intellectual output of someone who I always liked, admired, and found to be fun and intersting.
The concern I have been feeling relates to the unfortunate fact that our parting would at best be described as acrimonous, and our interactions since then have sadly slid through frigid to their current “non-existent”. As such I do find myself wondering what she would think about me reading her blog.
On the one hand she is placing her thoughts, musings and observations on display on the internet, the ultimate public display area (as am I for that matter), and as such she cannot practically or morally exert any control over who reads her stuff (unless she were to institute some sort of user log-in).
On the other hand I wonder whether there is some moral imperative for me to refrain from reading her site, given that I doubt that she would discuss any of what is on her site with me were we to meet on the street (or possibly say anything to me at all for that matter), and that while her blog is within the public domain, it is primarily intended for the benefit of friends and family, of which I am neither.
This of course goes on to raise an interesting dichotomy, as I have no qualms about reading the blogs of complete strangers which I find during my web explorations (as I have mentioned in numerous posts to this blog). With strangers’ blogs I am merely reading the pronouncements of otherwise unknown people to the world in general, however with my ex it feels as though I am somehow invading her privacy. It’s all very confusing.
It would be interesting to know what her opinion on the matter is.