Privacy, Originality and Amateur Blogging

 
Google’s Eric Schmidt once proclaimed that every young person will one day be entitled to change their name when reaching adulthood to protect them from the wealth of information about them online. Whether this day comes or not, the notion of privacy on the web has been a topic in high debate, particularly after the skyrocketing popularity of social media sites. Considering the evolution of what privacy entails, and what information is now socially acceptable to share, examining the trend of blogging sites reveals a particularly interesting story concerning originality and confidentiality. 
 
The explosion of amateur blogs through diary hosting sites such as LiveJournal, Blogger, and more recently Tumblr, reveals either a yearning to publish intimate information, or more simply, a desire to join the crowd. With Tumblr’s appeal to a young demographic, gone is the notion of a physical diary with a lock and key that girls in primary school once wore upon their necks. Now their inner thoughts and inspirations are shared online. 
 
But has the type of information and processing changed as the medium evolved? Examining Tumblr, we see users creating ‘original’ pages by reblogging the same images and quotes found on their friend’s Tumblrs. The result is a mass of rehashed graphics that contribute to what Baudrillard would describe as a hyper-reality of meaningless symbols, where the origins of objects are sought for in vain. At the end of each post, the cycle of appropriation is revealed as we see a seemingly endless list of sources detailing who reblogged the same post from where. Is this merely another example of the death of the author? Or does it suggest the user’s desire to create their own barrier of privacy online, a personality comprised of everyone else’s?
 
Author Masahiko Mizutami argues that the concept of privacy is being replaced by that of ‘transparency’. Here ethical dilemmas are solved by the anonymity granted through a web presence. As concepts of autonomy and subjectivity alter as a fact of belonging in a ‘networked world’, so does privacy change from a term being unique to individuals towards that belonging to hosted sites and their communities.