I do writing on the internet for a living [1] and I have considered how to start writing to put a less filtered, job-driven view of the world online but people close to me who I value both dislike the vanity aspect and ask "what is it you want to say, which demands you be the one to say it" and I reflect on that a lot.<p>I don't have an answer but I do think "it's cathartic" is part of things. Being able to make a position clear in writing to others is beneficial, it changes a dialogue of unequal capacity face to face, of fast speakers and slow thinkers, into one of more considered writing. And, you can chose to filter or not, you can decide to remove the comments which are intolerable, or even just disagreeable (or not: sometimes, making it plain other people don't agree is the whole point)<p>I value other people's writing online immensely. I'd like to be part of the community who do it out of core drive, desire, but I am mindful I have people in my life who are very oppositional. To them, it has significantly less value, or even negative value. Primarily, to loss of privacy.<p>Privacy is a wall it's almost impossible to replace, once breached.<p>[1: I'm not here to spruik my blog. I am part of a team doing this as well as podcasting. We're reasonably successful in terms of readership, listership and referral/linkage.]