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< Aliases are hard, perhaps impossible, on the modern Web

Hi ~shoebx!

I am also taking a sort of "permanent" alias for the first time in the smolweb. In the past I would either use anonymous sites, or I would use random words as aliases, for example on IRC, where I would ensure anonymity that way. Every now and then I would keep an alias for a few days while I kept an ongoing conversation.

I also used Discord for a while, where I also kept a single alias and more or less became part of a community for a while. But I am not a very discord kind of person. I like sites like this where the conversation can take place at a more leisurely pace and I don't have to be there the whole time, I can take my time to reply, and I can make longer replies. That's how I do.

So for the first time in a long while I decided to establish an alias to develop a voice for self expression, in smol.pub. It has been kind of hard, because I try to make up a persona and keep some sort of consistency in my writings. On the other hand, that part of me that unfolds when writing on the internet tends to be rather... cynical, and I am not sure if I want to come off all the time as a sort of jaded pessimist. It is hard for me to keep a balance of the qualities I like in an online persona that I try to builds, after all, an alias is a character that one assumes for the purpose of social communication.

Bun in general, I am most fond of anonymous media, I like small sites where, even though everybody remains anonymous, one can always identify the underlying presence of a handful of recurring people, so there is an ongoing conversation where voices get mixed in an undifferentiated homogeneous mass, and yet manage to emerge a sort of overall personality and tone.

Such are the wonders of the internet. I am just happy to be as far away as possible from the big busy hubs of mostly worthless compulsive activity.

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~shoebx wrote (thread):

Hi ~detritus, that's very interesting! I think we had similar, yet almost opposite experiences. I had a "big" public alias for most of the time, and you the opposite; it's really nice seeing this point of view!

Anonymous media sounds nice indeed, although I'm not sure how much I could "live" only with them; I think I'd "solidify" at least a few of them and build a "big" alias soon, I tend to attach quite easily to people.

I guess that's my biggest concern: how do you handle emotions when, in a way, nobody knows you (and in the case of anonymous media, you know nobody)? I think I'd get attached to somebody, become friend with them and see them disappear eventually without notice. That'd hurt quite a bit if it were my only way of interacting with people, I think.

I'm really curious for more details on this kind of experience.