Inhibition

Blogs are public displays of the things that don't necessarily have to manifest themselves in your outward appearance. You want the world to know what you have to say even though it's some crappy post about the fish you ate for dinner or the skirt you bought at Myer. By making your life digital, you overcome the inhibition to remain within your own mind space and exert control over the freedom of expression that has since become guaranteed in our constitution.

And though it may be that blogs serve as avenues of self expression, the blogger also realises that his target audience cannot necessarily be monitored leaving a whole realm of possibilities for retribution.

You can't stop your mother from clicking on link in an ad she saw online that redirected her to a website with a blog link to a blog roll which links her to Technorati showing a URL to a blog which talks about this other blog that's fantastic to read and all... oh wait a minute that's YOUR blog... And all hell breaks lose because someone who shouldn't be reading your blog is in fact, drooling all over the keyboard hungry for you to divulge more information that will give them enough evidence to come after you and persecute you to oblivion. Every human being will have an urge to get back at you if you've said something against their belief, and blogs serve as hives of information to the unwary cyber trawler.

So many bloggers, especially celebrity bloggers are very careful what they post online. You don't necessarily want to comment on the national policies of a country that you live in if you're not very fond of the ISA knocking on your door and taking you away to a dark dark place.

What about any reference to "terror" and "extremism"? Unless you really like Villawood, then if your front page has a portrait of The-Man, Encik Bin Laden and a slogan which contains among others, words such as "jihad", "Muslim" or "al-Qaeda". Above all, you don't want to discuss marital/ couple issues even if you feel the strongest urge to do so, especially if you know that the likely audience for your blog include your partner's friends and family.

People will get talking, in front of your face and behind your back, when you say something controversial on your blog. And bitches move into full attack mode when they grab hold of information that will give them fuel to feed their insatiable bitching needs.

Malaysian ministers went to great lengths to make sure that Malaysians knew that "anyone who posts issues that fire racial dissent will not be protected by the Government... instead persecuted to the full extent of the law". Censorship and propaganda are effective ways a corrupt government resorts to so that they can do evil things without everyone knowing that they're actually being the Big Bad Wolf. Am I typing this at risk of the ISA? Who knows.

In being available to the public eye, a certain level of privacy ensnares the writer and he/she is sometimes forced to back down from speaking their mind about a certain issue even if it keeps them awake at night at the expense of precious beauty sleep.

Which is understandable, we can only divulge a certain part of our lives and thoughts to the wider audience leaving out large chunks which can get us into serious trouble. We store away our true thoughts from prying eyes even when the ISA is not involved. When I read people's blogs everything seems to be coated in a layer of icing, redirecting the reader’s attention from a real issue to something more acceptable or positive.

They’d rather talk about the surrounding circumstances than the issue itself. This is truly disappointing because then what good are blogs? On one hand there are legal criteria to be met and on the other our own conjured fairytale of how a problem should be viewed (often omitting the core of the problem in whole).

Why can’t everyone just say, ‘look, here’s the issue’?

Why is everyone so afraid?