"Outed" by the Star

I have maintained and enjoyed a loose anonymity with this blog for a little over 4 years. Like most bloggers, I find it a little more comfortable to blog without my real name attached. My real identity is essentially irrelevant to the dialog I attempt to provoke here, and to the points I seek to make. Dan at Gone Mild is an online personality, whose only impact on the world lies in his ability to persuade, or at least provoke thought.

Anonymous blogging has huge advantages - or, more accurately, non-anonymous blogging has huge disadvantages. Voicing your opinions and engaging in a rolicking public debate has risks. Most bloggers do not live off of trust funds, so they have employers who may disagree with their opinions. Neither employment law nor the First Amendment protects a blogger who offends his or her employer, even if the matter has nothing to do with his or her job, and even if it is written outside of work hours on a home computer.

Even apart from the risk of losing your job, there is the risk of losing your effectiveness at your job. If part of your job consists of getting people - clients, coworkers, etc. - to think favorably of you, it might not help to have them know what you think about George Bush, his optional War, or even a local restaurant.

Anonymity also reduces the risk of physical confrontation. It should not come as a shock that the world is full of crazy people, and some of the comments I get here reflect some unhealthy states of mind. Sure, I suspect that most of the inflammatory ones come from meek nerds whose bravado exists only in words, but who's to say that some nutcase won't cold-cock me someday out of the blue? Some of the comments on this site yesterday made me wonder what kind of person would write them.

All that said, I have not been at all obsessive about maintaining my anonymity. I've posted pictures of myself (and Jim Glover, my twin). I've written about my son's achievements in drama, and included links to sites that list his name. I've told many friends about my blog. A politician recently noted my presence at a fundraiser and made a kind comment about Gone Mild. If anyone has wanted to figure out who I am, they've not been faced with a difficult task.

However thin the patina of anonymity, and however appreciated it was, it came to an official end on Monday. Prime Buzz ran a story on Funkhouser's "kitchen cabinet", which included the line "Also joining the inner circle is Dan Ryan of the blog Gone Mild." The information has been repeated on a few blogs since Monday.

So, there it is. In all my life, I finally attend one single meeting in the Mayor's office - my first meeting in there since moving to Kansas City in 1985 - where I'm not getting paid or even seeking anything for myself or a client, and I wind up making it into the press. Just my luck . . .

I don't blame the Star one bit for writing it. I wish we had heard more about the countless developers and lawyers who made it into the Mayor's office in the past and emerged with pockets full of incentives. Nobody, myself absolutely included, should attempt to have influence with the Mayor and expect to remain anonymous.

What does all this mean? In all likelihood, nothing. I don't overestimate my importance in people's minds - I doubt that anyone who didn't already know it will remember my real name after a week. I doubt that the people who attack me in the comments are inclined to do anything more severe than attack me in the comments. I doubt anything unpleasant will happen, and people will have more important things to worry about than my identity. If I'm wrong, I can pull the plug on this thing, and find something else to fill my time.