Yeah, I want a piece of that action.
I think you and Bahim missed the point of “who you are in real life is not who you are on Qt3”. The context – the less said about that whole episode the better – and the source material – it’s a Fight Club quote – might help.
But the point is that we all have a lot of baggage in our real lives that we can drop when we come here. I’ve made a lot of mistakes that are part and parcel of who I am. We all have. But unlike a lot of my real life relationships with friends and family, they don’t have to enter into my relationships here with you guys. The same goes for anyone else. It’s a matter of identity. We have the luxury of leaving behind the worst of ourselves, or pretending to be entirely different people.
Now how you behave is another matter entirely. That’s where I think the living room analogy comes into play.
Also, I’ve never called anyone on the podcast by his or her real name without clearing it first. And I know a fair number of you guys by your first names, but I don’t use them in forum posts unless those names are widely known.
-Tom
I’ve decided to use a name that is consistent across all of my virtual life, so that people who know me from the forum here will recognize my steam account, my BFBF2 account, and anything else I might decide to play. I originally acquired the name in real life many years ago, as I ran in a circle of friends that had 4 guys named Jim, and I was the one with the espresso addiction.
While I’m perfectly comfortable with the people in my life knowing how to tie my alter-ego to my real name, that may not always be true. As an educated guess, I know that many people have goggled my name, and I’d rather my professional life - software, analysis, papers show up, rather than my love of competitive FPS games, or why I like certain styles of anime.
This sort of privacy concern is very interesting to me, as de-identification in meatspace is growing harder and harder to maintain. I recently had a long chat with George Church about the Personal Genome Project - where people volunteer both their phenotype info (eye color, weight, if they had cancer) along with their genotype information. The central idea being that as we gather more information about you, it becomes harder and harder to keep your identity secret. If I know a man living in zip code 02142 is about 40 years old and has colorectal cancer, I’ve already got a good bet on exactly who you are. Since that’s the case, you might as well disclose all of your information now, so we can use it to help cure diseases.
I fully expect that at some point, my “real life” and this one will be tied together by an entity such as google, and my attempt to have a private and public life will become futile. A smart enough person or engine could do that now: I’ve posted my current place of employment, my first name, my city, and the specific research I do on the forum before. Given that it should be trivial to know my last name.
We have the luxury of not telling people the worst of ourselves. If I don’t want you to know I starred in thirteen porn movies and I’m ashamed of it, I don’t talk about porn movies or connect myself in any way to them or admit I was in them. You don’t give people the dots to connect. If they connect the dots, you probably gave out too many dots.
This is where I am at with this right now. I wondered if it was an age thing and it sounds like you think so, too.
Only maintaining a single identity is its own reward. It’s interesting to read about people who value maintenance of multiple identities and their reasoning for doing so. I did this for years and enjoyed it at first, but then came to look at it as a burden and even kind of a drag. I do recognize that some folks would rather not know so much about their colleagues or casual friendships, and that is valid to a certain degree, but it’s also an imposition to expect someone to manage a number of identities.
I knew a Scandinavian dude who taught high school students in a rehab in the Bronx. I had heard that he was a published author and this information impressed me to no end until someone pointed out a box that contained dozens of copies of the same book, a paperback with a soft pastel color that depicted a boy and stroking the nose of a thoroughbred horse. One day I actually flipped through the pages of one of these books and discovered it was a novel length story about a boy who fucked horses. I honestly did not want to know that much about this Scandinavian.
Says the guy with only 61 dots.
And I think you’re extrapolating things from what I said that may not have been there.
I remember when I first got on the internet being urged by everyone not to disclosed your name and everything. Since getting out of college I’ve been trying to build a name for myself in the game industry and started become more public about myself, first starting with my blog and now doing video casting. I think out of sheer laziness on my part I haven’t bugged Tom yet about changing my display name to my full name. I’m pretty much a laid back guy in real life as I am here and I think at this point there isn’t any harm for me posting with my full name.
Well, to be precise, less an “age thing” and more a one-way progression. I anecdotally suspect that nobody moves backwards along the continuum as they grow older. (The one example of backwards progression in this thread turned out to be for SEO reasons, so I don’t count it.)
Only maintaining a single identity is its own reward. It’s interesting to read about people who value maintenance of multiple identities and their reasoning for doing so. I did this for years and enjoyed it at first, but then came to look at it as a burden and even kind of a drag.
This. I think repoman showed a scenario where it’s concievably better to lie (when activities you take part in are socially weird), but I don’t think said lying is easy or non-stressful.
I think this really could apply to just about anyone you meet in an environment that’s wholly separate from ones which your reputation precedes you. With circles of your family or certain friends, your reputation precedes you or you may just find yourself acting a certain way and making assumptions about how you should act based on how people might think you are going to.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of times where no one has any expectation of what kind of person you are and you can surprise yourself sometimes. Those situations are worth their weight in gold.
I would be highly weirded out if anyone on here actually knew who I was.
Still, it’s for the best. When my novels start coming out years down the road, I’ll be able to reveal myself in the threads about them just when you least expect it!
I didn’t sign up here with my real name simply because I’m not connected to the gaming industry in any way and assumed those who did use their real names were. And I picked this silly nick because the email address to the nickname I originally signed up with no longer exists. I’m basically a nobody who just likes the atmosphere of a place like this, but I’m not at all worried about anonymity.
I use this handle for gaming related stuff, but my real name for everything else online. I don’t care if people know my real name, and I’ve often considered asking Tom to change it on Qt3.
I respect folks willing to use their real identity, but I also believe that people have the right to be anonymous if they desire it on the internet. It is those peoples responsibility to uphold that anonymity though, and I have no sympathy for anyone losing that anonymity because of a facebook account linked in a forum profile.
I’ve gone back and forth on QT3 anonymity. On one hand, I’m generally better behaved when posting under my real name. On the other hand, I’m always worried about finding myself in a position of needing to do a job search. When it comes to circulating resumes, I’m always afraid of my QT3 profile being the top google result when searching for my real name. Which it was when I was posting here frequently under my real name.
You should totally go by Wick Nalter.
This is a great game!
Wick Nalter
ComThick
Dill Bungsroman
MMalloy
…the list goes on
I try to keep as small an internet footprint as possible for security reasons. People, and I am guilty of this as well, put way too much of their own information out there, meaning that it becomes somewhat trivial to try to guess things like passwords.
I like using mmalloy cause there’s a whole lot of them that come up that aren’t me when you do a google search. I think my facebook, which I update very rarely, is the only unlocked down thing I’ve got out there and unless you know what the “m” stands for, that’s also hard to find thanks to the bunches of Malloys that are out there.
Mulva
This is exactly it. I’d happily post under my real name here… but then I’d never get a job again. We can’t all be freelance game journalists.
Murgatroyd.