I’m not sure if the comments I make are a bit too lengthy sometimes. I like to add additional information which does requires going into detail, maybe I should cut back a bit.

Just write in your voice how you feel about the post, make an effort to keep the conversation going and interact with one another.

ChickenFreak

Don’t you think it’s hard to keep up the privacy you want to have while blogging? As you have said you are still anonymous if you only use your first name. There are so many people out there with the same name as you.

Re:
“Whenever someone wants to be anonymous, he seems to need to hide something”
and
“Why do you want to be more anonymous than others?”

Minor response: There are lots of aliases, so I’d argue that I’m no more anonymous than many others.

Main response: Ah, but I’m not more anonymous than people _traditionally_ are – I’m essentially returning to the status quo. Before the Internet, it wasn’t possible for someone to type a few characters into a keyboard and find out all about your politics, your hobbies, your relationship with your family, your reading habits, and so on.

In the Stone Age, if I asked a friend for recommendations for good trashy mystery novels, my boss wasn’t able to listen to that conversation. And that fact didn’t make the conversation any less valuable. My relationship with my friend was not devalued by my failure to tape-record it for replay by anyone who was interested.

In other words, privacy or discretion, choosing what to reveal and who to reveal it to, is not a bad thing. Opening up one’s activities to all the world should be a choice, not a default.

I’m not under any illusion that I have strong privacy on the Internet – if I needed strong privacy for something, I wouldn’t be doing it on the Internet at all. If I even needed half-decent privacy, I wouldn’t be using an email address linked with me. There are no big secrets hidden behind the ChickenFreak name.

But I don’t think that it’s somehow shameful to decline to shine a bright light on everything I do, either.

I don’t believe that there is anyone who has nothing to hide, or at least to push into the shadows a little. Imagine the most proper person in your life. Imagine the most improper joke that you’ve ever told. Would you happily tell that person that joke? If not, are you ashamed of your need to “hide” something?

I don’t think that you should be the least bit ashamed. Every person has more than one face, and privacy and discretion are good things.

ChickenFreak

And you are right by using first names you don’t necessarily become best friends immediately. I simply think it’s easier to connect to someone who uses his real name. Why would you need to be anonymous on the Internet? Whenever someone wants to be anonymous, he seems to need to hide something. I believe that blogging is about being honest, showing your vulnerabilities and acknowledging them.

I am not saying that you can’t have a meaningful conversation with someone who uses an alias, alone this conversation shows that you can indeed have a meaningful conversation. But I would like to know why you chose an alias? Why do you want to be more anonymous than others?

In fact, this makes me think about a lot of interlocking issues about identity and friendship and illusions of friendship and privacy and age (and the resulting difference in attitudes about online communication) and … well, I could go on and on. I may, later in my own blog world, but in case I don’t, I’ll go on here, too.

Thought One: I used to do a lot of online roleplaying. And in roleplaying, you always need to be aware of the level of reality that you’re dealing with – IC (In Character), OOC (Out Of Character) and RL (Real Life).

When roleplaying, it’s essential to keep those levels of reality in mind, and to be aware that interactions are not usually based on friendship, they’re just based on shared joy in a hobby. Sometimes they turn into a fully-developed friendship, but that’s quite rare.

I think that merely being online similarly involves different levels of reality, and the potential to mistake a shared interest for a friendship. I think that online is often OOC, not RL.

Thought Two: I’m also reminded of Miss Manners/Judith Martin’s view about the immediate use of first names. People who are friends use each other’s first names, so if we all use each other’s first names, we’ll all be friends instantly, right? Well, no. As she makes clear, cause and effect can’t be reversed that way.

Thought Three: There are always layers of identity and privacy. John Smith’s grandmother, and his mother, and his brother, and his sister, and his girlfriend, and his drinking buddies, and his boss, and the counter guy at his local coffee shop, all probably know a different person as John Smith.

I don’t mean that he’s actively lying or actively roleplaying. But his grandmother isn’t going to hear the dirty jokes that he shares with his drinking buddies. His boss isn’t going to hear about the favorite children’s stories that he shared with his grandmother. His girlfriend may know about depths of feeling and vulnerability that no one else in the world is aware of.

Thought Four: And, in fact, he may well have different names for different people. John. Johnny. Johnathon. Smith. Smithie. J. Jay. J.S. John-boy. Jon-Jon. The name doesn’t make the relationship; the relationship makes the name.

——

So I think that whether I’m ChickenFreak or whether I’m that other name that I choose to withhold from the general public isn’t going to make me one bit closer to, or distant from, the general public. And in fact, I don’t think that I’m any less close to a person who knows me as ChickenFreak, than I am to a person who knows me as the other name, just as Johnnie isn’t any more or less of a person than Jay. ChickenFreak isn’t anonymous; ChickenFreak is a different face.

Everybody has different faces. Online, you can easily put different names to them, and I think that’s a good thing, not a bad one.

ChickenFreak