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This New York Times Magazine piece by former Gawker blogger, Emily Gould, hits some sour notes about what it means to share your life online…and share…and share.

This quote from Gould is something I never want to hear Carrie or myself saying:

“I had made my existence so public in such a strange way, and I wanted to take it all back, but in order to do that I’d have to destroy the entire Internet. If only I could! Google, YouTube, Gawker, Facebook, WordPress, all gone. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for an electromagnetic storm that would cancel out every mistake I’d ever made.”

Oopsie. God love her, Emily learned her lessons in front of thousands…and thousands. Being first to market is often like that.

We stand for the usefulness and beauty of transparency. As Audre Lorde says, “If women were to tell their stories, the world would crack open.” And I think there’s a powerful distinction in here. It’s about sharing MY story, not how everyone else is implicated in it — not my husband, my ex-boyfriends, my family, my team, or my girlfriends. As we’ve said before, Carrie and I do what we do for two reasons: a) to fulfill our own creative calling, and b) to be useful.

Privacy is usually a very useful practice.