Starting over
It’s that time of year again. I’ve just spent the last hour reading through my archives and deleting posts I simply found too humiliating, so there’s a considerably trimmer archive to the right.
I’ve also been mulling over Anil Dash’s post “Privacy through identity control“, and I see merit in his argument that there’s no escaping an online identity — only controlling it. I’ll admit it. I Google myself every now and then. The thing is, the me that comes back with the Google results isn’t exactly me, especially since my Facebook profile is extremely restricted and my Twitter username uses no parts of my actual name. If I assume that the rest of the world is currently suffering my level of ADD, I need to start doing some better brand management.
To that end, I’m considering moving back to a domain that has my name in it. I had one years ago, and I moved away from it because I thought it was too Google-able so I’d always censor what I wrote… but I pretty much do that now because The Internet Knows Everything. I’d also worried that my posts were too political or too Muslim for my professional life. Some of the more rabidly political posts fell victim to the yearly purge, and as for the Muslim ones, well, that’s who I am. I wear a hijab on my head, I fast during Ramadan, I pray five times a day. I don’t see how it’s at all “hidden” in my non-virtual life, so I am trying not to succumb to this idea of “too Muslim” on the Internet.
The only catch is that I never renewed the domain I had years ago, so someone’s been squatting on it for years, and it’s going to be expensive-ish to get back. It’s the one I’d want most, though, so I need to figure out if I want it enough to pay the squatter’s asking price or if I’d be okay going .org or changing up the name slightly. In either case, if I do move, I’ll have this domain redirect until it expires as I don’t think I’ll ever want this one back again.