Goodbye Anonymity

Back in the "old days" there was some fun in having online anonymity  Mine is Murdale.  Hello.  Good to meet you.  Recently it has become hard to hide behind an online identity. Especially in the last year of so.  This, in my opinion, is a double-edged sword.  On one side I can respect certain online communities in wanting to weed out the trolls and assume control over commentary.  Certain comments and behavior have no place in an adult conversation.

Huffington Post recently followed the protocol of other new organizations.  Leave a comment and you're identified by your Facebook Page.  Last year, the Southern Illinoisan did the same thing.  Okay,  Fine.  I feel however, it's chasing away people who may actually have something to say, but are wary of having their real identity exposed.  Again, I can relate.  

On the other hand, I worry about some of the trolls.  Some of the rhetoric I read makes me wonder if I really want to see my comments linked to my Facebook page.  The reason I say that is I was recently subjected to  bit of potential flaming by one lesser informed lower life form.  It stemmed from a comment I made on Facebook where I questioned the recent botched Oklahoma execution.   Without going into too much detail, I opined the botched execution along with the death penalty to me seemed barbaric.

In an adult conversation, this would have been a lively exercise in discussion.  However, that was not to be.  I received some diatribe about what the convicted had done to deserve the death penalty.  This however soon degraded to the point where I was accused of spitting on the graves of our service members, etc. I was even called a "liberal."  The clincher was when my Facebook name was copied in a post for all to see.  That crossed a line.

It was an invasion of my privacy.  We all have opinions.  Some get rather shrill.  But when you do something like that, it opens all sorts of doors.  It also lets people know who you are.  If you post on comments on the Southern Illinoisan you will show the world who you are, access to your friends and, at times, your various affiliations or ideologies that could be used to bully you.

That is the new bully pulpit.  In this age of NSA surveillance, Facebook and Google, a lot of people, some of them a bit warped, can now see you and yours.  Be careful. 

Welcome.

 I began this blog 5 years ago after the May 8 derecho which shut down life in southern Illinois for almost five days. 

Now here it is 2014 and I want to use this blog as an avenue of self expression as well as to let everybody know what's hot and what's not in this beautiful region. 

I also hope to reexamine my roots as a music journalist.  Before I moved up here in 1998, I was a scribe among many other things.  My focus was the San Antonio hard rock and metal scene.   I was proud to serve at one time as a music columnist, a booking agent, a club DJ and a credible spokesperson. 

What brought me up here is a long story.  It involved a fortunate coincidence of career advancement and the opportunity to discover my roots on my father's side of the family.  A lot has changed since then. 

So, what can you, the reader, expect?  A lot of discussion about the southern Illinois music scene.  I'll begin by focusing on some of the people I've had the pleasure to meet and be involved in, especially over the last four years.  Some occasional salutes to old friends and acquaintances from San Antonio and Austin.   Some photos, but no cute kitty photos.  Well, maybe a few. 

I'll try not to get too much into politics as not to offend certain parties.  When it comes to certain issues. such as fracking and climate change, that's another story. 

Enjoy.