Nashville Knucklehead

NIT removes the masks

When I started blogging, I was anonymous, like almost everyone else I read. It allowed me to write some really personal stuff, just because I felt like it. When I started meeting fellow Nashville bloggers, I realized that many bloggers in town wrote anonymously because they worked at a big company and they wrote about politics and abortion and religion and worried if they did it openly, they might lose their job. (And they were obviously blogging on company time, too.) I started thinking that I didn't have anyone to answer to, and it was kind of silly to be anonymous, and that maybe I should take off the mask. My friends were all reading my crap, so why not? Still, I was a little nervous. Then CLC started blogging, and right at the beginning, he put up a picture of himself giving platelets at the Red Cross. At first I thought, "how brave!" Then I thought, "Brave, my ass. All he did was put up a picture of himself on the internet where any freaky stalker who likes 40-year-old men who give blood can track him down and kill him. there is nothing brave about that."

So I posted some pictures of myself, but didn't give my name. I have a 5-year-old little girl, and the internet is a freaky place, and I still wasn't comfortable. Then, because of my business, I really "came out" in a big way. Because blogging has been an integral part of the marketing of my BBQ joint, this blog is like Cheers, where everybody knows my name. Now even my mother reads my crap. That's why we don't have the same . . . uh . . . stories we used to have here. It's really weird after months of writing anonymously, that now, when I mention something like cutting my finger, within 10 minutes, there is an email from my mother asking me how bad it is.

But I've seen this anonymity loss happen a lot in Nashville, and I think it is directly related to the community that has been created by Nashville is Talking. I don't think we would have the sense of community that we have here if someone didn't take it upon themselves to bring us all together like WKRN did. And there is no way that my "genius" marketing plan (telling people about my business on my blog) would have worked without it. And because of that, I have met lots of people that I normally wouldn't have otherwise. I think that is great.

So here is another picture of myself. I just got my back waxed.

posted by Nashville Knucklehead @ 2:49 PM