It all happened after one Halloween night. I changed my profile pictures on Orkut and Facebook, and suddenly the entire world figured I was Clark Kent this Halloween. Everyone from my long-lost friends to distant relatives knew exactly what I was upto that night.

Then it all hit me. In this day and age of mini-feeds, page updates and public profiles, we are all living in our little glass houses on the internet, and there’s hardly anything we can do about it (or can we?). People are just zooming by and peeking through our walls into our glass houses and with just a few mouse clicks, they know exactly what’s the conversation in each room. Sometimes I wonder why I even have a door.

But, ultimately I think it all boils down to one single point. How much do we want our real lives and our “alterlives” to blur? Is there anything we can do about it, apart from not being online that is. I know people who would not ever think of joining any social Web 2.0 thing online because they are just not comfortable living in these glass houses. But then on the other hand, we still somehow start leaving online footprints in one way or another. Because, like it or not, the online world is already deeply integrated into our offline lives in more ways than one.

If we can’t beat this system, the question is how do we best embrace it? While of course, we are all leading naked lives online in our little glass houses, is it more about being “selectively naked” so that you can show the world what you only want them to see? Blinds anyone?

Well, that’s my house in my alterlife. What does your glass house look like?