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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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I've been reading diverse opinions on pseudonyms on Gemini. Some people swear by them, claiming that they give them freedom of expression and the ability to rest peacefully. Others claim it's not worthwhile. It's incredibly difficult and can be mentally taxing to try to consistently separate online identities.
I, like many others who joined the Internet as a youth, established myself on the Internet with pseudonyms. This wasn't to obscure my identity as much as to have fun with alternative names. Why use "Josias" when I could be "jracer" or "Valcor"? Those were more exotic, at least to my 12-year-old self.
When I started to expand my presence online, I started using my Minecraft username everywhere: MasterOfTheTiger. I still use it in some places to this day. I hosted a Mastodon instance, ran websites, and contributed to cooperative software with that name. It was my identity. Some people scoffed at it, so I was hesitant to share it with friends in real life, but that didn't matter. It set a boundary between my life online and my family and acquaintances in meatspace (the world outside cyberspace). They might have known about my alternative identity, but most didn't care.
After a while, I decided to merge my online and offline identities. I became "Josias" on Mastodon, and used "justjosias" wherever just "Josias" was unavailable. I started contributing to open source projects, signing up for websites, and conversing with people online under that name. It felt good for a while---freeing, even. I no longer had to hide behind a pseudonym. My thinly-veiled self was out for all to see.
That didn't last long. Eventually I became paralyzed by it. Anyone with Internet access could theoretically find my Mastodon my just searching my name and following a couple links, and anyone on Mastodon could find stuff other people posted about me in the same way. I wasn't comfortable with that, especially since my full name is globally unique, with almost every search result relating to me.
I became anxious whenever posting online, imagining all the ways everything I said could be used against me. The more I posted, the worse it became. It was frustrating. I wanted to be free and I didn't want to hide. Couldn't I have both? I was more emotionally obsessed with my online identity than I ever had before.
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Recently I came across Aaron Swartz's blog (RIP). The first post is from 2002, when he was 16 years old. The posts span 10 years, often getting personal. He talked about his feelings, thoughts, random stuff he found interesting, and even an in-depth study of the writers of Wikipedia. His writings are often short, somethings extensively lengthy, and never perfect. He was free to write what he thought for the whole world to see, and unlike me, he had an audience. Even better: people respected him. Most people didn't judge him for his ideas, and the smart ones listened.
I'm not Aaron Swartz, nor did I know him, so I can only guess his feelings when he published his thoughts. Was he stressed and anxious at the thought of thousands of people reading his posts? Or was he amazingly freed and empowered by the fact that he had an audience at all?
Near the end of his life, Aaron suffered immense difficulty. He was under a lot of pressure by his position as a social leader and even more by the threats of the United States Department of Justice, which wanted to see him in prison for decades for his efforts to liberate science.
Was it a good idea for him to put himself in that position? Should he have been pseudoanonymous online and hid his actions to avoid becoming a target and a celebrity? Would that have even worked? What should I do, knowing what happened to Aaron Swartz in the end?
How can we be free in our speech but not be afraid to fight for what is right?
I want many of the same things as Aaron Swartz. I want to see people liberated by universal access to knowledge. I wholeheartedly agree with the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. Information must be free, so that it may never be used to enslave. I want to see the Internet open to all, and for it to be used to empower people rather than suppress and surveil them. I want technology to serve people, not have people serve those who make technology.
Pseudonyms make standing up against power complicated. Obviously, a screen name won't keep the government from tracing the identity of a student who uploads Kerbal Space Program to the Pirate Bay, but intelligence agencies probably don't care. That student's not a threat to any publishing company nor to any political institutions.
In political movements, there are sometimes individuals who volunteer to stand up and represent the people to power. People like Aaron Swartz are seen as leaders who fight against the powerful and demand justice.
I also want to stand up to power (welcome to my Gemini capsule, Director Nakasone!). I want to work for communal liberation. I want to fight for what is right for humanity. But can I really be free to discuss this without fear? There are people who violently oppose those who want freedom. Are we willing to take the risk? Do we want to feed the government with more information to use against us, or organize ourselves in ways that obscure our identities? Is it worth it?
There's so much more I could write about this aspect of pseudonyms, about privilege, about identity, about government, and even about Aaron Swartz, but I think this sums it up for now: Does the name and identity you use make you freer, or fearful?
~ Josias, 2022-02-06 (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Links:
lyk's thoughts on pseudonyms, along with links to other posts
Aaron Swartz's first blog post, it's fascinating to read some of the thoughts from his younger years