BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

Remove your mask

  
  

Page: (1)2

 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
10:23 / 16.11.06
I dunno if this is a new idea or not here; the search engine apparently tells me it is.

as of late, I'm not comfortable using a nickname in Barbelith anymore. I feel ridiculous, actually. it used to be part of the fun when The Nexus / Barbelith was launched, but with time it got progressively useless.

I think it made us look bad when you think of places like other general game, comics and movie boards [name your examples] - where posters usually abuse their "freedom" of hiding behind a screename to ignite flamewars or just be pricks.

once having a Barbelith nickname was a bit like seeing yourself wearing an INVISIBLES "fictionsuit". after all, the board was more or less launched as a Grant Morrison Forum of sorts. the names we cool, most of the time, and I suppose made us feel like that too.

I used to find it kinda strange that "Tom Coates" was the only "real person" hanging around, but being the forum owner and designer that felt cool in its own way.

but that was 5, 6 years ago and I just felt stupid using "Vortex09" or "Hector The Friendly Vortex" or any other name that expressed how smart I think I can be. it used to be part of Barbelith's charm. not I just feel stupid doing it. for the last months I've slowly de-nicking myself, but I feel much better using my real name.

on one hand I value people's privacy. not anybody wants the rest of the internet to know who they are when talking about Sex and Magic, for example.

and in crazy vigilant times like these, with security cameras all around and online social networks connecting everybody [and blogs, instant messaging, flickers etc], it feels you can't even fart without your family, co-workers and unwanted friends knowing about it and picking you for it. I suppose this can be a big issue for board members feeling comfortable talking freely about any kind of subject.

on the other hand in all the other messageboards I post in I got used to show my real name. and I've learned with time that it DOES improve the level of conversation to know who you're talking to.

yeah, sure, our "real" names and Memeplexes are fictionsuits themselves, for a different, more tridimensional kind of Game [First Life, anybody?] but if anything I suppose those Memeplexes can project a better aura and help us play the Game on a different level. one of more respect, for sure.

see, I'm not calling for mandatory unmasking of all of Barbelith members or anything. It'd be just like the CIVIL WAR comic, if anything, hehhe. I'm telling you how I feel, because to tell the truth Barbelith has been not a great experience of late for me. and I suppose this can help improve it.

of course, we can always discuss policies [and an infinite amount of subjects] to oblivion with the respect we deserve and still keep our übber-cool nicknames. and even remove ourselves from the conversations when we're not happy, simply lurk or simply not log in anymore, but I don't feel like it. and I'm not too much care what others think of my opinions anymore, well informed or not.

I'd be happy to see more people doing it [there are already guys using their real names here and there] but I respect others' privacy - when it's not used to bully other people around. this is not a call to arms rather than a statement.

so, hi, I'm Hector Lima. who are you?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:31 / 16.11.06
I respect others' privacy - when it's not used to bully other people around.

That sounds very unpleasant, Hector. I hope you haven't encountered such bullying here, and that if you have you'll be sure to make everyone aware of it by posting links to the incidents in question.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:39 / 16.11.06
and I've learned with time that it DOES improve the level of conversation to know who you're talking to.

Exhibit A: Byrne Robotics.

I think there may be many reasons why you might not be enjoying Barbelith, Hector, but people not using their real names strikes me as a very odd one to focus on, especially if the reason for your objection to pseudonyms (bullying) has not, as you seem to be saying, been a problem on Barbelith, only on other boards the practice of employing pseudonyms on which might remind people of Barbelith. People are, of course, free to use or not to use their legal names as they desire - it's just a login, really.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
10:41 / 16.11.06
dunno, Mordant, I'll leave it like that for now. maybe this bit is just about an over-defense of mine against a couple of over-witty comments to some of my posts. some knots that I still have to untie in-threads...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:58 / 16.11.06
Righty ho - in which case, usual warnings apply. The Internet is a scary place. The power to see email addresses on Barbelith user info has been removed precisely to make it harder for people to be tracked down. You may wish to exercise caution, especially if you live in an area where stalking is easy, stalking has already taken place or if you have a distinctive name. If you change your name, it will be 28 days before you can change it back. Otherwise, fill your boots, kids!
 
 
Quantum
11:01 / 16.11.06
I only just started changing my screen name for a larf, and went by Quantum for years. Which is my real (although middle) name. I keep my email address on my profile which is my real name, but really what does it matter? Where is this bullying? Who cares what my real name is?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
11:43 / 16.11.06
I'm not really sure how knowing a person's name is really going to help stop their 'bullying.' Sure, you might be able to do something like get them dooced if they've been complaining about work, but unless they're actually harrassing you in a criminal manner that seems quite monumentally petty. (If they are harrassing you in a criminal manner, you can report them to their ISP or even the police.) Otherwise you're kind of stuck with the processes available on that particular messageboard, which work the same whether you're complaining about Nigel Smedley of 93 The Laurels or xXl33tboi23Xx.
 
 
Ganesh
11:49 / 16.11.06
... in crazy vigilant times like these, with security cameras all around and online social networks connecting everybody [and blogs, instant messaging, flickers etc], it feels you can't even fart without your family, co-workers and unwanted friends knowing about it and picking you for it.

Or your patients. Or those who possibly should be.
 
 
Sniv
12:35 / 16.11.06
Firstly, Quantum, is that really your middle name, or are you just leg-pulling? If it is, it's the coolest name I've ever heard, and I'm stealing it for my firstborn.

Onto the actual subject, it's a tricky business, innit? As our Dr G rightly says, he has some pretty solid reasons why real-names are not such a good thing, but I can also see where Hector is coming from.

I do think that if everyone was using their real names, the atmosphere would be different. I'm not sure why though. I have some notion of it being more civilised but honestly that's just a feeling, and really very hard to qualify. I use my real name because I couldn't think of a moniker 1337 enough to have as my fic-suit, but also becuase my name is how I identify myself. That may sound very obvious, but I get the feeling that Haus or Ganesh or Lula's fic-suits fit them nicely (although I'm not sure why, but I always want to call Haus 'Terrance').

On the other hand though I do get the feeling that were Barbelith to lose it's colourful names, it would lose a chunk of it's 'alternative' appeal. This is a place where people will 'cross-dress' without many problems, where they can take on larger-than-life characteristics every 28 days (see Flyboy's rotating aggressive names, or Flowers's newbie-confusing gendertwisting). It'd probaly be a little dull without this imagination fuel tacked onto the side of every page.

So I guess whatever makes you more comfortable on Barbelith is what you have for your name, although I'd like to see some more real names along with the superhero names and other dazzling appellations.

All this talk is making me want to change my name to something awesome, too. Must give thought.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
14:44 / 16.11.06
The confusion here is that Hector appears to be asking us for our birth names, as opposed to our real names. Because as far as I am concerned, I am using my 'real name' already.
 
 
grant
17:26 / 16.11.06
My real name is grant. I think enough people know my last name around here that I couldn't even pretend it's a secret.
 
 
grant
17:28 / 16.11.06
It's capitalized on my official documents, of course. But on the net (and elsewhere in public life) I lowercase it. Seemed like a good idea in the mid-90s and sort of stuck.
 
 
Quantum
18:19 / 16.11.06
John- yes, Quantum is my real name, no lie. My other middle name is Fierdash, I shit you not. Makes login nicknames easy.
 
 
Tom Coates
18:46 / 16.11.06
I also think, on the whole, that engaging on the web under your real name is mostly a pretty positive experience and does limit people being abusive and aggressive to some extent. However, I'm in an industry that understands this stuff very very well, and there's so much stuff about me online already under my real name that it would be difficult for anyone to find the odd stupid thing that I've said. People in other industries, people who don't know what industry they want to work in, may be more circumspect and probably rightly so. If you want to 'come out' I'd say it's actually a pretty good experience, it's not too scary and there's not too much to worry about as long as you abide by the golden rules - what would I not want my mother or my employer to read. Stay away from those and you're okay.

On a related note, Haus said, "The power to see email addresses on Barbelith user info has been removed precisely to make it harder for people to be tracked down." This is not strictly accurate. There were a number of reasons to take it down, but actually the main reason - firstly to hide it from non-logged in users and finally to hide it from everyone - was because people with free e-mail addresses like yahoo or gmail were letting their accounts fall into disuse, at which point established trolls would take over their e-mail addresses and hence their accounts.

And the other reason, of course, was that displaying them left people at risk of their e-mail addresses being collected for spam purposes.

I also think it was only our decision to stop showing them that really made it practical to expect people to use serious e-mail addresses when they registered. People are often nervous about putting that information out into public and even though many are not, you have to protect the nervous rather than simply please the majority.

Hope that clears things up a bit.
 
 
The Falcon
20:23 / 16.11.06
Hector, I posted under my real name for three or four years, but have since decided not to because it's not as fun and also because I had to do a mod request for a guy who wanted to remove his real name from a post about magic, after having (he claimed, and I see no reason to doubt him) been informed by two prospective employers that they were not going to employ him because of his interest in the occult. If you replace 'the occult' with 'comics', it's something I'm not really enormously keen to broadcast my, some might say, obsessive interest in to the 'real' world and prospective employers at a time when I'm trying to gain a foothold in a profession. Most people here that I'd care to know my name, or surname, and I'm more than happy for them to continue to refer to me by one or the other, (as Pegs has, most recently in the Elephants thread in Convo) but I'd really rather not the googleable duplex.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:42 / 16.11.06
Couldn't you just blame the hard-boiled novelist?
 
 
The Falcon
21:15 / 16.11.06
People in the army don't read comics, silly...

Oh, wait. I wish I could blame former SBS man for all my indiscretions, really.
 
 
Spaniel
10:15 / 17.11.06
I think our usernames bring a lot of colour to the board, although I would be interested in hearing what Tom has to say about how using our birth names could limit nastiness. Is there any evidence for this?

Personally, I'm not a fan of forcing people to use their birth names. As a convention it seems po-faced, unexamined and just the kind of thing that a rather immature adult would think was grown up (Hector, that isn't directed at you) - it works to shut down a level of playfulness that I'd like to see more not less of.

In terms of my username, I'm very, very happy with it. And I should stress that coolness is the last thing on my mind when I log in of a morning, and I suspect it's the last thing on the minds of many, many other people.
To echo Lady, Boboss feels like my name. It feels like me. Okay, so it's not the name I use IRL but it's definitely how I'm most comfortable identifying on this online space.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
12:21 / 17.11.06
I have always enjoyed the masked identities online handles and so forth offer, and have adopted a fair few over the years for various reasons including posting mutliply in the same thread (not on Barbelith by the way), sometimes to confuse, sometimes not. I also enjoy the sense of carnival that being part of Barbelith sometimes resembles - here it can be Mardi Gras every day, and night - of larger than life fluid personalities flickering between variations of the person on the other side of the computer monitor one is actually in communication with.

Following a discussion with Stoatie* the other day in which we were talking about suit names and real names, I decided to put part of my birth name into my current ficsuit title.

Partly because I never have used much of my real identity online (at least not in a forum like this), and partly because it struck me that it's quite an odd name to have, and one which I've always felt ambiguous about. So using this name by my own choice has an element of reclamation about it, of testing my potential embarrasment by putting it in the public arena. Having said that, no-one would actually recognise that it was part of my real name, save for some people here who know me in real life.

On the other hand, occasional incidents in the outside world have made me quite cautious about attaching an identifiable picture of me to my name online, which could in theory be found by some assiduous googling and connecting of dots and links. But I'm fairly paranoid about such things, and given that my last name is not very common at all, having my full real name in use online would make me quite easy to pin me directly to somethings I'd just rather weren't available to anyone who happens to want to find them out about me, for whatever reason.

Having said which, there are various things I've written which I'm more than happy to have available online with my real name on them, but they tend not to be anything revealing about me or where I live, and certainly never posts on a message board.





*this is also hir real name, honest.
 
 
Jack Fear
13:56 / 17.11.06
Personally, I'm not a fan of forcing people to use their birth names. As a convention it seems po-faced, unexamined and just the kind of thing that a rather immature adult would think was grown up

Warren Ellis has an ironclad birth-names-only policy on The Engine. I think that says it all, really.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
14:03 / 17.11.06
Haus, I may have exaggerated by naming the thing "bullying" and it's nothing close to stalking, but thanks for the concern.

to everybody else: I see the value of the Carnival atmosphere in Barbelith. it's not to be taken for granted as it's always been part of the charm. I gave this some more thought and realized maybe I'm going through a phase of reassurance of my own 'born' personality/memeplex or something. developing...

thanks for your impressions on the subject. this the kind of deep thinking stuff I've been missing from the more recent conversations I've had around here, which have been usually met by small stones made of übber-zing wittiness, which may have scratched slightly the in-need-of-reassurance 'original' persona.

which might have been the real reason I've started the thread anyway...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:14 / 17.11.06
I really like ficsuit names, though I prefer to think of them as being more like superhero names. I am always Stoatie in some form or other online, though very few people call me it in real life anymore (other than 'lithers). As such, it's a fairly trackable identity for my online persona.

I don't mind people knowing what I can only describe as "what my mum and boss call me, when they're not being rude"- I usually sign PMs with it, unless I forget. There are enough pictures of me online, and probably enough places where someone could put the names together if they knew anything about this weird computery stuff, that it's really not an issue.

I just like being Stoatie, really. I don't have a problem with people using their real names if they want- as long as it's not something horribly offensive (as we've had here a couple of times in the past) people can call themselves whatever they like, as far as I'm concerned.

Though, as I mentioned in another thread, the fact that there's a poster on B*rn* R*b*t*cs who shares his name with a rubbish TV celebrity famous for his impolite puppet dog never ceases to fill me with joy. Especially when he gets pissed off with people pointing it out.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
15:45 / 17.11.06
I remember when I had the only phone conversation I have had with a lither and they were shocked that when they asked my mother (I was a kiddie when I started) for "Elijah" she knew it was me, because it is my name.

I don't hand out my last name or SSN all willy nilly, but I haven't really felt the need to use anything but Elijah for years.
 
 
The Natural Way
17:09 / 17.11.06
I think you might want to consider, Hector, that the motivations for many of our screen-names have absolutely nothing to do with being cool or clever. I picked mine for its perversity. I am, in fact, very uncomfortable with it. It makes me feel weird. And that's why I still like it.
 
 
Olulabelle
18:46 / 17.11.06
I've always been Olulabelle online, although here I sometimes change it for some form of Lulaness. If it is something else completely it only is for one month, so the Lula bit is always included.

Olulabelle was originally a bastardization of my real name Isabella, along with some other things including how The Lovely Boy used to get Isabella wrong. Lots and lots and lots of people call me Lula or Belle including The Beautiful Man and all the people I originally met online and whom are now my friends. Olulabelle is me as much as Isabella is.

Originally one of the reasons I didn't use my real name here was because I was fighting for custody of The Lovely Boy with his father, and I was having to go to court a lot and be interviewed by CAFCASS people and all sorts of hideousness. None of the things I am interested in, like Shamanism and ethnobotany and using entheogens as medicine would have gone down very well at all with that whole custody thing so I tried to hide behind the username so that if I was googled I would look 'respectable'. I still edit myself because of that and I don't contribute to a lot of threads here even though they are about things that in life I could talk a lot about. It's weird to be aware that a lot of people in the real world would consider the things I believe in to be shocking and 'wrong', but that's another thread entirely. I have noticed that I am starting to feel more comfortable now and I have thought about changing my name to Isabella. But I like Olulabelle and I feel it is me too.

I too am really keen to hear more on how people treat each other differently when real names are used.
 
 
Feverfew
19:00 / 17.11.06
I don't have any particular need to be anonymous - but I do value my privacy (in as much as you can, these days) and I find I enjoy the feeling of 'being in my fictionsuit'. Sure, were I to shed my suit and use my real name people I don't want to find me (socially, that is - I don't think TEH GOVRENMENT are after me yet) might do, and that would bother me - but it wouldn't affect my life unduly now.

However, what concerns me slightly is that the Feverfew 'fiction suit' didn't spring out of anything - I've never been 'Feverfew' before and it's never had any particular resonance - it was 'just' a herb I was trying to grow at the time. Now, I think I'm growing into the identity slowly, and it might be counterproductive to step out - that is, if I can be claiming to use the suit as a tool for personal development.

I'm babbling, aren't I? It's been a long week, and the babbling stops...
...
...
Now.
 
 
electric monk
19:52 / 17.11.06
Now, I think I'm growing into the identity...

Odd how that happens, isn't it?
 
 
Ex
12:12 / 18.11.06
and I've learned with time that it DOES improve the level of conversation to know who you're talking to.

I'm interested in how, specifically, as I can see it might go either way. In my case, my full name (as far as I can tell) is unique. What I'm prepared to say under that name would be so limited as to massively reduce my online contributions. Possibly I'd produce better thought-out stuff, but I suspect that I'd mostly keep my mouth shut, as my best thought these days will (hopefully) look a bit rough and badly thought-out in a couple of years (I'd like to keep get ting better at thinking).
Particular at the moment, as I'm looking for jobs - horribly clever people are judging me on my capacity to argue well and use language properly. So I'd reckon it too risky.
I'm not sure anyone would miss my less thoughtful contributions - ah, those intricate and ludic nob gags, like a set of chinese boxes, with nobs drawn on them - but I'd miss the opportunity to make them.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
13:01 / 18.11.06
I hope all of you guys one day have the opportunity to say whatever you want online without the fear of losing/not getting jobs/clients and with no fear of embarassing yourselves before your loved ones. or the ones you can't get away from. =)

we shouldn't be afraid to stand behind our opinions, hobbies, way of live, worldviews. it's one thing to become invisible in order to dodge Big Brother's eyes and I respect that. it's another to hide forever who we are and what we stand for.
 
 
sleazenation
09:34 / 19.11.06
Interesting thread. Tell me Hector, where do you draw the line between what is public and what is private? Do you even recognise a distinction?
 
 
w1rebaby
15:09 / 19.11.06
I have gotten used to being careful about revealing any sniff of RL identifiable information - which most certainly includes my name - as some places that I moderate could lead to me experiencing at the least unpleasant phonecalls and at the most actual physical violence. That sounds a bit melodramatic but I've seen it happen to other people and I'm not going to take the risk; the internet never forgets. I even worry about the photos of myself that I innocently released years ago.

I signed up for Warren Ellis' board a little while back because I wanted to send him a message about Second Life, but I really agonised about that, it felt wrong, and I won't be posting with that login again if I can help it.

Part of it might have something to do with the fact that if you google my real name, amongst a few sarky comments on BBC stories which I don't mind, you also get a piece that I wrote about "positive" and "negative" body modification when I was a student. I don't think that it's a terribly bad post actually, even though I was rather young, and I'd be happy to put it on, say, Barbelith, but... employers, random people to whom I don't actually want to admit that I used to self-harm, you know, googling someone's name is par for the course these days.

I've also seen a number of people who've given away RL details and then been tracked down in RL by weird obsessives, calling their employers, posting their pictures and so on.
 
 
Spaniel
18:26 / 19.11.06
it's one thing to become invisible in order to dodge Big Brother's eyes and I respect that. it's another to hide forever who we are and what we stand for.

Now, Hector, that reads a little but like an accusation. If it is I think you'd do well to step back and think about a)Sleaze's point about public and private space, and b)how the internet differs from the real world.
 
 
Char Aina
18:36 / 19.11.06
i agree.
 
 
Ex
19:16 / 19.11.06
Yes, I should qualify my remarks about work, a bit - who I am and what I 'stand for' differs from place to place. That isn't about hiding my True Self, so much as adjusting depending on audience. So, for example, I wouldn't deliberately lie about my sex life in a significant way, but the conversations I'm happy to have about it would be very different with:

- my mother
- my boss
- my partner
- my best friend
- Barbelith

That's not to say that I'm concealing some big essential truth from any of them - I'm fairly sure that all of the above have the gist of my Big Truths about sexuality, body modification and so forth (I'm very lucky in that respect - nothing's going to go tits up for me if I come out in a variety of ways at work and at home).

However, people have various levels of understanding, and slants. It helps me to communicate if I take my intended audience into account (and it's also polite - I try to think of who I might offend among readers before I post anything).

My full name would make visible all these various approaches and roles I have - which would in some ways be interesting, but in other ways would just confuse people a shedload.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
15:02 / 20.11.06
I think a few of you know my actual name (which I really do loathe) but I am always Kali. Here firstly and anywhere else. It's a very scary very comfy fictionsuit.
 
  

Page: (1)2

 
  
Add Your Reply