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branchandroot) wrote2007-05-29 02:22 pm
branchandroot) wrote2007-05-29 02:22 pm
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The reality of names
I believe those of us who participate in online communities should find a new term to describe the name(s) by which we are known offline.
There has been a sad proliferation of terms that use "real" to describe offline names, lives and identities, and I would suggest it is a false application and a harmful one.
In what way are our online handles not real? They are, in fact, reified with every word we type using them. The fact that there may be many such identities does not make any one of them less real. Only the sincerity or lack thereof with which we speak in them can do that.
One name may be the one we use in monetary communities such as banks, when signing for a loan. Another may be the one we use in creative communities to sign the works of our imaginations. The structural functionality of both names is the same.
Under certain circumstances, "official" and "unoffical" could suit the need to distinguish between what is acceptable to, say, employers and what is not. But even that casts a shadow over the legitimacy we generate on our own account, in our own spaces, to our own rules.
Myself, I lean toward "offline" and "online" which are less value-laden and more simply descriptive. And, for those who are in the privileged and fearless position of using one name for everything, the statement that "this is my 3D name, too" has a certain panache.
There has been a sad proliferation of terms that use "real" to describe offline names, lives and identities, and I would suggest it is a false application and a harmful one.
In what way are our online handles not real? They are, in fact, reified with every word we type using them. The fact that there may be many such identities does not make any one of them less real. Only the sincerity or lack thereof with which we speak in them can do that.
One name may be the one we use in monetary communities such as banks, when signing for a loan. Another may be the one we use in creative communities to sign the works of our imaginations. The structural functionality of both names is the same.
Under certain circumstances, "official" and "unoffical" could suit the need to distinguish between what is acceptable to, say, employers and what is not. But even that casts a shadow over the legitimacy we generate on our own account, in our own spaces, to our own rules.
Myself, I lean toward "offline" and "online" which are less value-laden and more simply descriptive. And, for those who are in the privileged and fearless position of using one name for everything, the statement that "this is my 3D name, too" has a certain panache.
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Kind of like Ces' thought with not saying that we know/think fic is omg-illegal! and doing the opposition's job for them.
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This is so very real. To say rl and irl is to dismiss so much of the energy and work that we put into this. We already dismiss so much of ourselves, say that what we do isn't very good and isn't worth compliment that its nearly criminal, and certainly destructive, to disown these very personalities and relationships as being 'unreal.'
I think I'm done with not laying claim to my work, thanks.