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The Apolitical Semiotics of Identity in Virtual Communities; or, Using a Fake Name Online
I overheard a conversation recently, where the participants (both infamous Ricochetti) were discussing their reasons for using their real names online. They made a compelling argument for it: standing by what you write and not hiding behind an alter ego. It got me to thinking about the many measures I take to cloak my real identity and to question the premise of doing so for so many years.
You see, I got my start in computer networks back in the dark ages of 2400-baud modems, a magical time when sysadmins would telnet into their WU-FTPd servers as root, and gopher was the standard for information exchange. I had no admin rights to anything, but I did have what I thought was a collection of clever nicks on local BBSes. I have thankfully forgotten all of them.