Anonymity and Somethingness

November 9, 2000

It's kind of surprising to me that so many people use or aren't afraid to reveal their real full names online, especially in chat rooms, message boards, and so on, where anyone could read them. I can't bring myself to do that. I have a good enough reason for that.

The internet offers a certain degree of anonymity, although IP and email addresses, etc., can give some indication of where you live or go to school or if you do your surfing at home or at work or when your computer teacher thinks you're doing research. At first, that kind of freaked me out. I would prefer that my real-life identity remain a mystery. Granted, there are plenty of clues to who I am - a few people may already know part of my name. But that's as far as my comfort zone goes.

No matter what anyone says, people learn to be prejudiced. I'm not referring only to prejudice based on religion or ethnicity, I'm referring to *all* forms of prejudice. It is because of prejudice that we have blonde jokes (although I must admit I have been known to exchange them with blonde friends). It is because of prejudices that if you're not rich enough, not succeeding as quickly as someone with connections, or not as thin as Kate Moss that there are people who will automatically think you must therefore be a stupid, lazy slob. (Truly intelligent people know this is a load of crap.)

Unless you put your picture on the internet or tell people exactly who you are or give some indication of what you are like when you're not online, people reading what you type through a computer screen have to get to know the "real" you (or at least how you present yourself; I know there's a lot of phonies out there). I have found that in real life, it's rare to be around people who can see through surface-level stuff. When no one knows about your school records or knows about who you hang out with, you don't have to be whoever or whatever your classmates, teachers, (or even friends or family) think you are or want you to be.

People either like you or choose not to, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with that darned surface level. Now that I'm online regularly, I have people I have never seen face-to-face tell me how cool they think I am or how much they love my site, when if my former classmates, neighbors, and so on had any sort of say in the matter, that wouldn't happen. *I* couldn't *possibly* have a wickedly funny website, since they saw me as being nothing but serious and did not bother to notice my personality and love of reckless fun. In fact, if it were up to them, I wouldn't have *any* kind of website, since only "cool" and "interesting" people have websites (often created by fancy, pricey page builders, of course, since so many of them are too damn cool to learn basic html).

But, because this is the internet, I don't have to fit anyone's definitions of myself, including what I thought were my own. I can be funny, smart, goofy, creative, insightful, and - dare I say it? - interesting and cool. Not that I care what other people think of me, but let's face it, someone's perception of you, if strong enough, can ultimately affect you, positively or negatively. It is because I can feel free to be myself online that I don't completely despise myself anymore.

And that is why I don't reveal my real full name online.



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