My favorite thing about the Internet is the way it makes so many of us into storytellers. It turns people on to sharing their own experiences, especially experiences they might be uncomfortable relating in person. My enthusiasm for the Internet’s encouragement of transparency extends beyond digital confessionals and group therapy and well into the mundane: instruction manuals; wikis packed with the sort of minutiae one used to have to wait to overhear at a cocktail party; and the open listserv a friend maintained as a shared journal, where my every entry addressed the lone lurker no one knew (but who seemed to be named Paul and kept showing up in the output of a REVIEW DIARY-L).
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