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Re: Pseudonymous

In response to [Pseudonymous].

Marginalia has written post about using nickname rather than real name. His (of course we can't know, if it should be "his" or "her" - and it's ok for me) point of view is some sort of explanation why he is using it. I feel it a bit like a feeling guilty of using nickname.

For me it's normal and obvious. I started to use the Internet with nickname, and I didn't know anybody then, who was using a real name. In the same time, what could be shocking, I had knew the most of people behind the nicknames. It was caused by then shape of the net, which was for me more connected with local social-groups. So when we started to connect for example to IRC, I didn't know who is who. But after a while there, I could recognize the real people, for example from my neighbourhood or school. And sometimes, I could talk with somebody on IRC, and didn't talk in so called real-life. But that was 90's, and the net was different then.

Decades later, the net is different. We were bombarded by era of professionals, who introduced whole official accounts, and name and surname domains. In the most cases professionals mean that there aren't place for non-commercial net. People became live visit cards, for their businesses. They create commercial content, and try to sell it. It caused that they want to be seen as serious Mr. John Smith, nor by nickname. Maybe it is caused by the changing point of view of net coverage, and withdraw from that local social-groups net.

But it is not an obligation to create a professional real name domain, or to put there all net activity. I think that that time has gone. That obligation was also some premature step in net's growth.

Today's net consists of so many activities, that nicknames are helping to organise them. I would call them avatars. It's handy to create one avatar for hobbies, which won't impact on the other ones. It isn't obligatory that everyone must be able to query everything what we put into the net by one phrase. Let's not get crazy that we need a bank-like net "credit history", as proof that we are real.

The second thing is something that we are learned about our private data, that they are value of today's world. So it's wise to don't put them to public, if it isn't necessary. It isn't the same as hiding or misleading people for purpose. It's some convention that other people will use our avatar, and they won't feel cheated. They also don't need nothing more than our avatar in the most cases.

The third thing is connected especially with small-net. I think that being there is coming back to the 90's sense of the net, and that local social-groups. So maybe it would be like on my first IRC channel, that we will be knowing each other behind nicknames.

[Pseudonymous]

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@ Sun 16 Jan 2022 11:17:31 AM CET

tags: #people, #question