Following up on blogger conversations at GA, Jess’ Journal has a new post on blogging ethics, where she talks about writing under a pseudonym:
I think that blogging under one’s own name adds a level of responsibility that some people aren’t willing to deal with. When you can be confronted in "real life" by something you wrote in a public forum, (and those who expect a blog not be be public are deluding themselves…) you tend to think more about what you post and its ramifications. Again, from the article on Winn Schwartau’s site:
"IT security ethics are no different than ethical behavior in the physical world. Ethical people understand how their actions affect other people. They know what is right and wrong and take personal responsibility for their actions."
This of course does not delve into those who do blog under their own names, but in a persona quite different from their "real" selves. One can control others’ perceptions more readily in written form than in person. What can be easily identifiable in the real world as manipulation can appear completely reasonable online. And, one always has the last word on one’s own website.
I’m going to leave aside for now Jess’ implicit allegation of irresponsibility and denial and assume that sentence was just poorly written. Instead I want to deal with Jess’ underlying assumption: public authenticity is not only possible but also good.
There is a school of thought that believes that each of us holds within us something like a "true self" and that we need to "be true" to it. For lack of a better word, I’ll call this school of thought "expressivism," because its adherents often hold that an excellent way to "be true" to your "true self" is to "express yourself," an action which can take a whole host of different forms. For expressivists, then, not "expressing your true self" is bad, in whatever language they choose to express "bad" with.
The problems associated with identity, selfhood and the like are a recurring them here on this blog. So it probably comes as no surprise that I am not an expressivist. I don’t believe that there is anything like a "true self," that what self as we have is better described as a "torn soul," a wounded—sometimes healed, sometimes scarred, sometimes infected—mass of our collected life experiences. This is both our blessing and our curse.
If I don’t believe in a "true self," I obviously don’t believe it fair to judge people on how well (that is, how "authentically") they have expressed it. I arrived at this position by experience. True, 100% authenticity is simply impossible. In fact, in my own experience, the valiant search for impossible authenticity can be quite harmful.
Moreover, I believe it is unfair to ask people to do the impossible and then to judge them for their inevitable failure. Put more charitably, perhaps, expressivism (and its "true self") is not useful, in the end, precisely because it is, in the end, impossible. At best, expressivists can achieve temporary, proximate authenticity. And for those beautiful moments of grace and achievement, I applaud them.
Do I then believe self-expression is bad? Do I believe self-knowledge is bad? Do I think people should deceive others about who they are? No, on all accounts. But I believe that we are always expressing ourselves—for good and for ill—that we cannot help but express ourselves. Trying to express ourselves, then, is like trying to get wet when we’re already underwater.
But back to pseudoanonymity. While I do write under the pseudonym of "chutney," careful readers (or careful searchers) can figure out my real world identity easily enough, or at least something fairly close to it. Why then not write under my "real name?"
For several reasons. For one, my given name is not my "real" name—my "real" name is still being written. Secondly, "chutney" was a nickname given to me online, and my online blog seems an appropriate place to use it. Third, many readers would suspect that my given name was itself a pseudonym, leading to confusion.
Fourth, and most importantly for me, you will never know who I really am by reading my blog. Very few people do, if anyone does. I’m not sure I know who I really am, though I suppose I am the foremost expert. Writing under my given name will not change any of this. Perhaps it would make you feel you know me better than you actually do, but that is not a luxury I’m willing to give.
Does my pseudo-pseudoanonymity make me unfairly accountable? If it does, it makes all other pseudo-pseudoanonymous authors (Mark Twain, for example) also unfairly accountable. As Jess points out, this is my stage, and I can always have the last word (although I sometimes decline the right). If I choose to play myself as a character (or two) in this little stage, is that wrong?
As another possibly pseudoanonymous author wrote:
All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances; each man in his time plays many parts.
Don’t begrudge me my parts. Like you, I have to make it up as I go.
First, I assume that you’re referring to the first sentence of the passage you’ve quoted – and it says exactly what I meant it to say. Some people don’t want to own up to the things they say anonymously, which is why they post anonymously.
Second, my underlying assumption is not so much one of public authenticity as a removal of the assumption that anonymity is absolute. Many people use an anonymous persona in order to hide something from their physical world life, or to simply say nasty things about other people. I don’t believe that all anonymous bloggers do this, obviously, but there are enough that make it a problem. See the update over at my site for an example.
Fair enough. Point taken. And I’ll agree with you that absolute anonymity is impossible.
Still, I’m uncomfortable with the “some people.” Since this started as a UU/GA discussion, do you know of any UU bloggers who abuse anonymity? (I had assumed the UU blogosphere was the context for your post, but your update make me think I was wrong. Am I?)
In my case, I blog under a pseudonym not because I’m trying to avoid accountability for my words, but because I’m trying to avoid indiscriminately spreading my real identity all over the Internet, where it is accessible to all kinds of strangers, some of whom make their living by misusing private information. I’ve already had to abandon one internet service provider account name due to the deluge of spam and solicitations it attracted, before I realized that it was my participation in online discussions that was revealing my identity to data miners.
There are a lot of bloggers and other Web enthusiasts who do not share my concern for personal privacy, or perhaps my alarm over the prospective risks to privacy and consequences of losing it, in cyberspace. The online UU community is small enough that readers who take my comments seriously can find out my real identity easily enough, and I don’t mind at all if they are interested enough in what I say to want to know who said it. Most of them have already met me in person anyway, or else already know someone who knows who I am. As far as I’m concerned, though, people who don’t really care about what I’m saying don’t deserve to have my identity handed to them on a platter through this medium to use for their own unrelated purposes.
While stemming from a conversation with UU bloggers, these issues are blogosphere-wide. I have seen some of what I call questionable behavior from UU bloggers and/or commentors in the past, which is why I think the conversation is worth having on a larger level. And no, I’m not going to point fingers at specific people, ’cause that’s a waste of time.
Wouldn’t want you to point fingers here. Seems like the best method for dealing with anonymity abuse is to confront it head on, when it happens. At least for UU blogs, we have a responsibility to give and receive needed correction inside our religous community.