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Suits! Their abuses.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

09:01 / 14.07.06

A twin to a thread I started in Convo, because this is sort of more "policy" and less "light." Not SUGGESTING any policy, but this is the thought:

Reading the Policy threads on banning and mod requests, partly to get a better feeling for the community and its boundaries, partly because I'm the sort of jerk that slows down to look at a car wreck, it further occurs to me that the use of "suits" is not only a pleasant way of crafting a non-threatening form of interaction and exploration, it's also potentially licence to engage in whatever crap form of nastiness you feel like indulging in and remaining free of consequence. "DethRayzor666" denying the Holocaust is nothing like Harry Z. Menzies of 234 Crescent Lane, Deptsford, England denying the Holocaust.

Obviously this isn't "OH MY GOD SUITS ARE BAD" or anything of the sort, just... an observation. Would people be so quick to fly off the handle or indulge in nastiness if they were interacting as "themselves" rather than a suit?

09:21 / 14.07.06

people hide behind anonymity.
sure.
it's the same reason they have one way glass in police stations.

sometimes the power gained from anonymity is used for evil, sometimes it's used for awesome.

09:44 / 14.07.06

Interesting thesis, "toksik." Can you provide any examples of the latter off the top of your head?

09:48 / 14.07.06

(Within the context of a message board, that is, rather than IRL.)

09:57 / 14.07.06

well, i use mine to be more open and honest in some contexts than i otherwise would.

i am completely out as bisexual here, for example.
in real life they would have to know me a bit better than you do to know thatm and my telling meatspace friends has been influenced massively by my experiences testing the water online, here and elsewhere.

there are a few other situations of a similar nature, conversations i have had with near strangers about things they wouldnt talk about if they were face to face and afraid i was going to start whacking them on the head or laughing in their face.

its hard to say for sure, though.
kinda like preventative medecine; you dont know if it's working or if there was never to be a problem in the first place.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:08 / 14.07.06

The only thing that stops me from posting using my real name would be the ramifications it has for me job-wise if a troll decided to dedicate hirself to 'making my life difficult'. I've had friends who've had strange phone-calls at odd hours, who've had their places of work having to waste time dealing with crank calls from man mentals that have nothing to do with them. I don't think that posting under my real name would mean I mediated what I said much more, it's meeting in public where I've tended to find people to be a lot different from how I perceived them online.

00:58 / 15.07.06

What're the inverted commas for, Jack "Fear"?

02:45 / 15.07.06

It comes to my mind a line from Moebius' "Airtight Garage" (paraphrasing): I use a mask not to hide who I am, but to make absolutely clear who I am.

Anonimity? Good. Protection from real life trolls? Great. But, to me, what's great about a ficsuit is that, unlike our real life names, we get to choose them for ourselves. It is, thus, a reflection of our personality, our aspirations. It is an ideal version of what we are, it is what we may wish to be. Or to become.

I find an interesting new anthropological fenomenon, this one the netspace allows us, inlike meatspace: that we can recreate our identities, have multiple identities, keep secret identities (y'know, just like the superhero comics we read as children... or yesterday).

You people may find this either good or bad. It can be either good or bad, depending on how you use it. And that, for me, only adds to the possibilities, to the mistique.

Show the world who you are. Fearlessly.

I am Dead Megatron.

03:35 / 15.07.06

see, that's nice and all, but i kinda feel like my name is more of a found name.

a spaceship crash landed on a far flung earth colony, scattering parcels far and wide across the barely populated, desolate wasteland.
some of those parcels, clearly the important ones, were wrapped in a thick red tarpaulin and labelled with striking symbols and words from languages unknown to these, the distant relatives of the society that sent their ancestors on their fateful mission to nowhere all those years ago.

the leader of the party ripped a section of a tarpaulin and, seeing that it was strong and durable, fashions for it a cloak.
a finer cloak against the elements he would not find, and the others knew his example to be good. on their way home they decided to take new names to honour their divine property, and began to argue about what these names should be.

they took their bright gifts from the heavens, their cloaks of magical warmth, to the truth sayer and knower of words.
they knew him as wise, and as like as any to be able to pronounce the strange syllables of the long dead language. he can read, they know, because he has often told them so.
they have seen him read from the great book, and his stoies are good.
unfortunately he is not able to translate.
he read the words, allowing his imagination to complete where his knowledge could not, finding meaning for these alien sounds in his own mind.

upon these regal rags he imagines great titles, worthy of writing on a gift from the gods to these brave warriors.

finding these sounds to be good, the group made a pact, to take the names of their gifts as their own, and to remain as brothers from that moment until death.

this pact was never to be broken.

'basura infecciosa' died shortly after, as did 'peligro' and 'radioactiv'. 'biohazard' still lives, but has become so riddled with sores that he cannot open his eyes or his mouth, and will surely die soon.

me and 'giftig' are the only ones left, stumbling ignorantly through our foreshortened lives, slowly dying, unaware that the gods themselves have sealed our fate with their gifts.

see, it is me... just not in any meaningful sense.

07:50 / 15.07.06

Would people be so quick to fly off the handle or indulge in nastiness if they were interacting as "themselves" rather than a suit?

Not *quite* as quick, I think, but not as much as would make a lot of difference. You see loads of flaming on, say, mailing lists where people have subscribed with their real names in their addresses, and sometimes even who they work for.

Many of the issues of lack of tone and body language feedback, physical distance etc that contribute to arguments and escalations online don't change with anonymity, particularly when you're never going to meet that person anyway. The increasing awareness of Google and the risk of an employer reading your ranting might contribute a bit, I suppose, but not everyone cares when their blood is up.

08:47 / 15.07.06

yeah.
people used to go off on one on the intranet forum in one of my old jobs, as good as being in front of the boss.
i don't know how long they managed to get away with it because i was 'let go'.

Tom Paine's Bones

23:43 / 16.07.06

I'm coming from a different perspective on this, because I'd actually be far more likely to fly off the handle if I was posting as the meatspace me.

I'm used to being quite aggressive in debate, both online and in real life, and I made a conscious decision to try and tone that down when I crafted that suit. So I'm a lot more prone to asking questions etc. than I am in real life.

It's challenging at times (and I've slipped up at least once) but from a personal point of view it's very rewarding as an experiment.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

16:31 / 17.07.06

When I was younger and smarter (or at least thought I was) I loved the 4th wall aspect of the internet. It was nice being able to sit in AOL chatrooms talking about amazing books I had read without the sneering adults looking at me like there was no way I could possibly have read [BOOK X]. (ahh teen angst + arrogance, I am lucky to have survived)

These days, meh, I could go either way, and in fact Elijah is my first name. Mainly it just makes it easier for me to find my name when people are addressing me directly.

19:25 / 18.07.06

see, that's nice and all, but i kinda feel like my name is more of a found name.

So is mine. I'd go even further and say it eventually found me, more than I found it. But you have to accept it, adopt it, dontcha? And you do it because it suits you (unintentional pun alert) in some way or another. It's kind like a marriage, but without the overpriced wedding party with drunk relatives you don't even know all that well.