This reminded me of when a dear fellow blogger posted something nasty about me and immediately took it down. Later that night, I was chatting with TRS about a post which TRS had removed from his own blog:
TRS: It's online, and on the rss feeds...
1:03 AM me: listen, it'll last as long as it lasts, and that's that
TRS: forever
me: is [OTHER BLOGGER]'s post about me forever?
TRS: probably
1:04 AM me: take it down before it feeds into any more feeds and gets cached and all that nasty stuff
In those days of youth and naivete I thought that TRS meant that those who had subscribed already would always have the post in their RSS readers. But seeing those supposedly deleted posts made me think that maybe RSS readers really do keep things forever. I subscribed to the blog in which I had been maligned way back in the day, scrolled down to September 12, and viola! The following was seen:
Sep 12, 2008 2:57 PM E from CENSORED by CENSORED
I have this visceral belief that e is pure evil. Does anybody else feel that way some time?
The point of this post is not to laugh at people whose secrets are buried in Google Reader or to badmouth the guy who thought I'm viscerally evil. The point is that you gotta be careful. In the past I toyed with the idea of posting stuff that might be a tad too personal for public consumption but would be interesting to the friendly regular readers of this here humble blog. I figured I could delete it after everyone had read it, and my confidentiality would be safe. Say I to you, au contraire! Anybody can read anything anybody has ever written on any blog, merely by subscribing in Google reader!
Scary.
ReplyDeleteRecall I do not-which blog was that?
ReplyDeleteI too have a visceral belief that you are evil.
ReplyDelete(pause)
Oops.
dont forgot any comments made. i posted some not so nice comments, then deleted them, but whoever subscribed saw them anyway.
ReplyDeletei feel like this is directed to me a bit.
well, no, u are not PURE evil. ur not pure anything. plus, if u were evil, ud be like the devils sister or something. not the devil himself.
Apparently there is a way to access private blogs as well... not sure how, but someone was able to read what I wrote privately without having access to view my blog.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you are so not evil.
le7: true that.
ReplyDeletetrs: you gotta remember. The author of that post was pissed at me for not being related to someone and for leaving comments under pseudonyms. We had the chat which I quoted after you deleted that horrible guest post that I made.
Sarabonne: evil is more convenient.
Altie: oy. This is not the first time you're taking my posts too personally. This has NOTHING to do with anyone in particular. I'm just warning y'all.
when you delete your comments, the only people who can see them are those who already subscribed. But I'm talking about people reading deleted posts years later!
C: tragic. Google ought to protect us better.
Can you send me a link or something? I honestly don't recall.
ReplyDeletewow. that's rather disconcerting.
ReplyDeletereminds me of the time i wrote something, then deleted it, than had the person i wrote it about ask me why i deleted it.
awkward.
e - you're not pure evil.
altie - the devil's sister?
:D it has a nice ring to it
ReplyDeletee e e, oy to u too.
A geek friend of mine told me that he heard that if Google has cached something of yours which you don't want people to see, you can contact google and they will delete if from their cache. but he's not sure how to go about doing that.
ReplyDeleteoh, e doesn't stand for evil? :)
ReplyDeleteand ya this google reader thing is cool
ReplyDeletenow we can read TRS' old posts without him having to post them again for us. I guess he'll only post new material from now on.
ReplyDeleteDovid, you could always read me old posts. It's called an "archive".
ReplyDeleteOh there's an archive? With all the reposting of old posts I assumed you didn't have one.
ReplyDeleteScroll down and look to the left...what do you see? Labels and archives! A veritable cornucopia of TRS goodness!
ReplyDeleteby golly, it IS there!
ReplyDeleteShocking, I know, but sometimes I do tell the truth.
ReplyDeleteWell now I don't get why TRS would repost something that I can find in the archives already!
ReplyDeleteHe's saving you the trouble... and would you really look back?
ReplyDeleteOnce you see the numbers on people who actually read the archives...
ReplyDeleteWell now that I have google reader maybe I will. But I see the chochmah in it- its like a best of TRS kind of thing. He can sift through and post the good stuff- its like espn classic.
ReplyDeleteExactly! Glad you're finally beginning to appreciate my genius.
ReplyDelete