SlowLearner

RAPID-FIRE!

It's on.

--SlowLearner

YOU WISH TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS?

Via Scott Walters, I notice 99 Seats, an anonymous blog by a New York City-based theater practitioner. I'm interested to see how this experiment progresses. The writer wants to be able to write candidly about problems with our current model of theater production, something quite difficult to do for fear of alienating the wrong person (from a career standpoint) or tainting his/her argument with questions of agenda.

I'm of two minds about this. It seems like there's a lot of potential for something like this, for an anonymous writer who can cite specifics and name names without fear. (And I have no problem with people exercising caution for career considerations, by the way. Just about everybody in the world has to do that, in every field, and anybody copping a purer-than-thou attitude about it is being a dick.) On the other hand, it's hard for an anonymous blogger to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons. For one thing, you they have to carefully weight every word they write for clues that might reveal their identity, which I imagine would be grueling. Also, it depends on readers being able to engage the ideas and content of the blog without playing guessing games about the writer. (For example, my first response - my first response, before considering anything else - was: "Probably a guy, right? I mean, there are probably some women who own DVDs of The Rock and Cliffhanger, but there probably aren't many.")

Anyway, I'd like 99 Seats' experiment to thrive, so I wish him/her the best of luck, and am looking forward to continued reading.

I just realized my own name isn't on my blog. Well, clearly I'm not anonymous. Anyone who can't figure out who I am in under three minutes needs to enroll in remedial internet school.

--SlowLearner