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Nosurfgirl recently joined the world of the onymous (cf) which I found charming (for some reason). About the same time, Margaret Blair Young called me out on my own (allegedly hypocritical) anonymity (read these two comments). She may have been joking (probably not), but it still caught me off guard. I'm not, as you know, anonymous --- I just play an anonymous person on the internet.
Clicking the link attached to "Th." on my comment in that above-linked-to thread takes you here which has my name name in all its legal glory. Even here on Thutopia I'm not very well hidden, even if my name proper is inobvious (but it is here, should you care to ctrl+f). I'm not anonymousish because of some deep-seated dread over being fired over what I blog about, though I suppose my faux anonymity is enough to provide a buffer should A Casual Enemy go looking for me.
Besides, I need to be Very Easy To Find for people looking for me in my other capacity as editor/author/professionalawesomator. If you bing me using my last name and either theric or legalname+middleinitial it's all me all the time and mostly sites I would want you to find.
And yet I still have the black bars over my eyes.
Identity in a world in which the real and the virtual are increasingly the same thing is inherently in flux. Nothing static about the state of my identity or the quality of my anonymity. To know me is to know me, whether you call me Th. or the same thing my parents call me. I am me.
And, at the risk of sounding demonic, I'm pretty dang legion.
I have names enough. Call me what you will.
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If this were a group blog with lots of traffic, I would, at this point, ask a series of questions like How do you decide when to use your real name on the internet? or Has your onymity ever gotten you into trouble? or What the heck is wrong with you, putting pictures of your baby on the web for all the perverts to see?, but we're just not that regulated here. Regulation doth not become, here in Thutopia. Not loosygoosy enough.
Waitaminute. Th. is short for Name WiTHheld, isn't it? It was YOU who wrote all those Ensign articles about your gay husband and your suicidal daughter!
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteAlso about when I used to torture squirrels for fun and profit I before I found repentence.
Actually, I'm pretty sure you published that one under your real name.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteProbably. I never did write a style guide for myself, defining which names are for which uses.
Back when I was working as a janitor in the dorms here, I mentioned in passing that I had a blog.
ReplyDelete"You have a blog?" a coworker asked.
"Yeah," I said. "It's called The Eccentric Sage. You should check it out."
The next day, that coworker said, "I tried to find your blog, but I couldn't. It was The Eccentric Sage, right? I just found something written by some guy who called himself a butterfly."
I also find it funny that, when posting blog comments, blogger asks you to "Choose an identity."
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete'Tis emblematic of our modern world.