Admission

Well, I might as well come clean. I've been deceiving most of my friends on the Net...somewhat, but only in one minor detail as far as I'm concerned. My real name isn't Matt...it's Reid. I've been supressing my real name on all of the fetish sites I frequent for good reason, in my opinion.

I manage more than one blog and I have quite a large presence on the Web mostly due to the fact that I've been around here for close to 15 years in some form or other. On my fetish profiles, I used to be speedogod many years ago then changed to speedoguru when I lost access to speedogod on several email service providers. But that was only one of my personas. I also have had many personal web sites and blogs over the years to discuss many other things that interest me.

Around 18 months ago, a very close friend of mine was murdered. My personal blog became a focal point for information for what I originally thought was just my close friends and their friends since he had been missing for almost a week before his body was found and I wanted as many people as possible to know what to look out for. As it turned out, the blog also became popular with the media and the police. There were several year's worth of personal conversations archived there that were suddenly being read by a bunch of strangers. The harassment by the media, the 'borrowing' of unsolicited pictures and information from my blog (that even made it into the printed media!) got to the point where I felt my privacy was being compromised, so I had to shut the blog down until the storm passed. Several months later the site came back up with a different name, but the potential exposure and unintended attention to my life on-screen in my different blogs (and different lives) became something very obvious.

Yeah, the Internet and particularly blogs are about as public domain as one can get, but the shock of suddenly having my personal life exposed like that was very unnerving.

About six months later there were union contract negotiations going on at my place of work and I posted a media release approved for public distribution on my personal blog that received other people's reactions, opinions and comments. A few days later, management at my company told me to take the post down -- something I was later given a apology for from the Communications department, but the damage had been done. This was one of several reasons why I ended up leaving this company.

I needed to find better ways to prevent my Internet presences in their different forms from cross-pollinating. Thus, my alter egos became even more important in 'firewalling' the different aspects of my life from each other.

So, what's a egotistical exhibitionist to do? It was at this point that Matt Bauer was born and took on a life of his own.

I just want you all to know that I value your friendships, support and insights. You might be wondering, "well, what else isn't he telling us?", but I ensure that everything else I've ever divulged or broadcast on my profiles is absolutely true. I've hidden my true name only to prevent my public daily/career life from crossing paths with my personal life again. Damn you, Google and your effective search engine algorithms!

With exposure from the Mr. Rubber Calgary contest and whatever else is to come, I've breached that wall of privacy and distinction in a big way once again; I've decided to come clean very early in the game here to you guys. I plan to retain Matt as my alter ego on the Ning sites, etc., but those of you that come here from time to time will know the truth.

I'm sorry if some of you find this unacceptable or regrettable. I've been burned badly a few times and I'm just trying to prevent a horrific collision of my lives from occurring in a way that I have no control over. It's not fun to have happen, and yes, we are all dealing with public domain and such, but there are many things we can do to minimize our footprint in this pervasive virtual world. If I remain proactive in how these types of situations are handled I think I have a better chance of maintaining my reputation and privacy, somewhat, and keeping the real and the virtual within the confines they should be kept in.