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Living Publicly

10:30 / 01.12.05

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve not been able to decided how best to start a conversation about it. This thread on ‘Watched v Unwatched’ accelerated my interest – particularly the Jamais Cascio presentation Chill linked to here and the idea of Sousveillance generally.

Anyway, a Head Shoppy thread is half-formed in my mind, but Loomis and other’s comments here have prompted me to start a thought-dump thread in the Convo first.

So, what I’m interested to know is to what extent you live publicly. In particular, I’m interested in how different people employ aliases or covers to conceal their identity. For example, I am very cautious about what I disclose about my physical identity in public arenas. I don’t use my birth name unless I really have to, and maintain (to greater or lesser extents) various alternative identities. Importantly, they’re not ‘joined-up’ – I’ve actively avoided having a coherent, consistent, singular identity.

However, some people here disclose a great deal more. Tom Coates, for instance, uses his real full name in Barbelith and on his blog, he is quite open about where he works, what he does, where he goes out, who he hangs around with, and does nothing to prevent anyone finding pictures of him and his friends, etc.

I wonder where on this anonymity spectrum other people feel comfortable positioning themselves. What identifying information would you be prepared to disclose here, for example? (Your name? A picture of yourself? Your email address? Your phone number? You home address?...). What informs that decision – What are you keen to allow / What are you scared of?

13:18 / 01.12.05

Well, my last name is Balfour, and I work for the same Sun tabloid that got the anthrax. I don't have a problem with strangers knowing that.

I was a little more open with contact information before becoming a family man, largely because my spouse worked in a profession where she's likely to encounter people who are 1/vengeful and 2/mentally ill, so if she recommended that the children of a schizotypal/borderline mother be removed from the household, she didn't necessarily want the mother being able to google our home address and the schools our kids attend.

I kind of made a conscious decision to be as much myself online as I could. I don't concentrate as much on that as I used to, but I still think about it. I like the idea of having a fiction suit that resembles me (even if it talks more than I do out there, in the meat world).

13:32 / 01.12.05

I also have made the effort to be me online. I think more specific messageboards (read: Buffyboards, Trekboards, etc) have a tendancy to be populated with people who create an elaborate ficsuit that isn't interesting and isn't an extension of themselves. For the perfect example, I urge everybody to giggle at the AICN Talkback forums. There, geeks and nerds (I do not use the terms negatively) go through lengthy back-and-forth fights over the most irrelevant details. These arguments derail into homophobic/sexist/racist insults, or insults about fucking the other person's mother, or some other shit. And of course, these people turned off their computers in their parents' basement and then became the silent brooding solitary nerd/geek that everybody works with. In the meatworld, these people would not dare say the same things in the same argument with another meatperson (Not all of them are like this. It's a stereotype, but I can't divorce my opinion from the fact I knew tons of people in high school who did this)

So when I found Barbelith, and I found out its insistance on a more elevated forum of communication, I decided to be myself, instead of that loud-mouthed ignoramus ficsuit that the AICN Talkbackers use. Using my real first name and my e-mail which features my real last name is supposed to be an offering to the great bearded stone. It's supposed to honour its sophistication.

In the meatworld, I am the same, but with one more attribute. I am far more snarky and sarcastic in the meatworld because that's my primary mode of humour. I'm like an only-moderately witty Wilde. But on Barbelith, I try to restrain myself from posting the snark and the sarcasm because often, this mode of humour does not translate and it causes the kind of conflict that I try to avoid.

I can understand the necessity of a ficsuit. I don't judge anybody who uses one. It's an interesting way to be somebody else. I used to do it on MySpace, but that was an experiment that ended up more nuanced that I'd expected.

OJ

13:42 / 01.12.05

Interesting question Smoothly Weaving, and thank you for the links. As it happens I've been thinking about the privacy/openness continuum and trying to recall any research about it myself recently, specifically with relation to blogging.

Since I don't have the time and inclination to write much about my own experiences of privacy, in a show n' tell sort of way, you might be interested in Jill Magid's work around surveillance at last year's Liverpool Biennial. Evidence Locker at Liverpool Biennial / Evidence Locker online. I got very involved in reading the logs made up of subject access requests to the police for CCTV footage of herself. The culminating part of the exhibition (and this was at Tate I think) was a video of herself to a romantic cinematic soundtrack being driven in a circuit around the city. It played out like the slushy ending to movie - heroine rides away into the rather damp sunset - but was made up of stitched together CCTV clips.

All of this is a very roundabout (hopefully not off-topic) way of indicating that I'm both fascinated by and rather scared of jigsaw identification. Unlike Grant, I don't have kids to protect and I don't think it really comes into the category of a fear: I'm not expecting the bogeyman to jump out from under the bed, or anyone to stalk me. I do work as a journalist so part of it is probably a separation of words I may produce professionally and opinions I may explore and express without necessarily wanting to be held accountable for them. But mainly, if you want a cod-psychological reason, it's probably about control.

It's frustrating though, as I do enjoy blogging to a limited extent, but can't imagine taking it much further as I'd be too concerned about eliding public and private personas.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:46 / 01.12.05

I'm pretty much the same online as in real life- there are things I don't like talking about online, but they're specific and usually for particular reasons- most people probably know them anyway, I just don't really like having them written down anywhere for various reasons. (Ooh, mysterious- actually, not really- just covering my ass).

I don't like people using my real name online- not because I care about people knowing it, really- I usually try to remember to sign off my PMs with it, whoever they're to, just cos it feels polite. I just think it spoils the fun a bit. I like having the alter ego, even if it's pretty much the same as my real one.

13:57 / 01.12.05

I think part of my project with the alter ego=real me thing was to try to get the meatspace grant to pick up some of the qualities of the cyberspace grant.

I think that has worked, to a degree.

14:19 / 01.12.05

what were you missing, if its not too intrusive a question?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:23 / 01.12.05

Dude! I wondered why your nickname was "Grant loves to climb stairs using BOTH HIS LEGS", back when we were allowed long ones...

14:37 / 01.12.05

OJ, thanks lots for those Jill Magid links. That’s spot on. Reminds me of Poliakov’s ‘Shooting The Past’ in lots of cool ways. Will come back to that when I’ve had a better read.

As you’ve clearly guessed, my interest in this has a fair bit to do with how/if we can continue to maintain alternative identities in the light of emerging trends, innovations and technologies – and whether by trying to do so we stand to lose more than we gain. I’ve recently begun to wonder whether my attachment to privacy and anonymity is something I should really strive to get over; whether, in fact, great things could be achieved if we all did.

OJ

14:52 / 01.12.05

I'm glad they're of interest Smoothly Weaving - it does sound as if we might be thinking along similar lines.

It also occurs to me that, as a mod, you can probably see my realname/workmail address, so I'm evidently edging towards non-paranoia in controlled circumstances. Funnily enough the combination of Barbelith's convoluted application process, moderation system and Tom Coates' openness with his identity, convinced me to edge slightly towards the light....

ps. The phrase in my first post was meant to be "time and inspiration", not "time and inclination", which sounds somewhat dismissive.

14:54 / 01.12.05

The Phyrephox identity started as a webmail address to give out when registering on sites to avoid spam blocking my personal e-mail address.
On Barbelith using it means my real name isn't google-able and therefore prospective employers or other such interested parties cannot use it to find out any peccadilloes I may have posted about here.
To be honest it is a fairly flimsy disguise and I occasionally feel I should try and be more guarded, but then I think "fuck it", I've got no deep dark secrets I need to keep hidden.
To make an analogy, Barbelith is like a conversation down the pub, I stand behind what I say, but I wouldn't necessarily want my boss or my grandma listening in.

15:43 / 01.12.05

OJ: as a mod, you can probably see my realname/workmail address

Nope, can't.

toksik: what were you missing

Probably a kind of candor. Openness in conversation. I was a lot quieter and lurkier in person a few years ago.

Well, that and the leg.

19:58 / 01.12.05

though i don't use my real name (it's 'astroboy 89' my mother's maiden name was 'jax 6') i am pretty much me on line.

i have a private post office box, 'cause i just don't necessarily want everyone who doesn't need to know knowing where i live. and when you move, it is easier 'casue most mail doesn't need changing. i also had a job a while back where i didn't want my 'clients' knowing much about me, so have usually had a silent phone no. not at all averse to giving it out to people i want but see no reason to have it simply available to anyone who might want to know me too intimately.

as much as anything it is a habit i don't feel so compelled to change, s'all...

11:15 / 26.04.06

I tend to have different fic-suits, but not too different. I tailor the level of personal disclosure to the medium and the community and how comfortable I am with that community knowing, say, what sorts of undies I prefer. I do not drop my address or my full name online without reasonably good security -- read: custom friends list on LJ -- but I am generally comfortable using my first and middle names, which are, ehrm, obscure, to put it kindly, and take well to use as handles.

Different handles denote different attitudes, different 'slices' of me, I find; while to large degree I am the same everywhere, simply because I cannot be bothered to keep multiple stories straight, I find that I behave differently under different names, probably because I use each of those names for specific sorts of situations which call for different levels of self-disclosure.

Sometimes just putting myself into a certain handle / personality has taught me valuable lessons and really improved my life. Not so much since I went back to being me with a wrapper, though; maybe I should pretend more.

Spyder Todd 2008

18:37 / 26.04.06

You know how a little while ago the Flash’s identity wasn’t so much a secret as it was available to anyone who really wanted to know it? Wally West wasn’t really a celebrity really, but if anyone had done a decent Google search they could have found out he was the Flash?
I kind of look at my identity like that. My “secret identity” as the Spyder isn’t really a secret at all, but I don’t go shouting it from the mountaintops.

I used to be much more cautious with who I was, but anymore, I figure it’s not a big deal at all. Especially on Barbelith.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

19:02 / 26.04.06

it's been a tough issue for me. i don't give out my real name online for a couple of reasons. one is that it's relatively unique and easily google-able, and i feel uncomfortable being googled by strangers who i may meet someday. somehow, the knowledge differential bothers me.

second is that i have a real-life semi-stalker who has basically become an online stalker at this point. he does regular web searches and e-mails me, letting me know that he knows where i am and what i'm doing. this has prompted me to publish under a different name than my legal name, so that i can throw him off the trail.

this subtrefuge really bothers me because i'm generally a pretty open person.

*

19:11 / 26.04.06

Anything arrestable or restraining order-able? Because that, to me, would seem to be a more ideal solution than having to publish under a different name.

19:33 / 26.04.06

I have a friend with the same sort of problem; since she's in America and he's in Australia, there's not a whole lot that can be done.

If you're in the same country, though, you've got legal options, which would be well worth checking out.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

19:46 / 26.04.06

it's a complicated situation. there was a time when i considered him a friend, and as much as i want to think that his actions don't warrant my sympathy, i know that i'm emotionally incapable of being totally indifferent to his well-being.

he gets a certain amount of emotional comfort from sending the e-mails, and the situation has stabilized at this point. i'm scared for both him and myself if i do anything that would disturb that balance, so i decided to do something independently of him that would give him the idea that things are as they are, even though i'm actually less traceable now than i used to be.