Pseudonymous vs. anonymous
This is a distinction I didn’t draw in my last article that mentioned anonymity, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks—starting, not coincidentally, when there was a lot of discussion elsewhere about allowing comments on blogs (usually along the lines of “Comments: Threat or Menace?”). I occasionally see people conflate pseudonymous with anonymous, and frequently see people fail to draw much of a distinction—but it’s an important distinction.
The oft-cited problems with anonymous commenting are real: too many people feel too free to say remarkably hateful things online when their words aren’t tied to their identities. “Too many” is objectively a fairly small number, but sometimes it sure doesn’t seem that way. Those who say that a real name policy will drastically cut down on the noise level in general and the nastiness in particular are, bluntly, right. But what makes that true isn’t the “realness” of the name—it’s tying the name to an identity.
A couple years ago there was a great hacker/teacher in the Ruby community who everyone knew as “Why the Lucky Stiff.” Did we need to know Why’s real name? No. People in the political blogging sphere have certainly seen their share of pseudonymous bloggers, and again, we didn’t need to know what the real names of “Publius” and “Billmon” are/were. And what about The Macalope?
In a real sense, all of our public identities are constructed, especially online; it’s not uncommon to meet someone you’ve been reading for years and to discover that they’re not much like what you imagined, not merely physically but in temperament. We share what we want to share; we project a specific image, write with a deliberate voice. As long as that voice is presented under a consistent name, it’s a consistent identity.
There are undeniably good reasons for tying that constructed identity to your real name. In my case, I think it’d be swell to have a column somewhere eventually, or at least another article byline or two beyond that review of Nisus Writer Express I wrote for About This Particular Macintosh in 2004. But there can be reasons to keep identities separate beyond “I want to have a funny name to hide behind when I make insults.”
N.B.: When it comes to comments, I’m kind of neutral. While “if you want to respond, get your own blog” is valid, I like having discussions in one place, as long as people are well-behaved. And it’s worth noting that some of the best quasi-regular commenters here do use pseudonyms.
