(brief gush: really enjoy your posts and the discussions that follow)
A few months ago, googling my (real) name, i discovered that someone else was using it.
This is bizarre to me (my RL name is Alia Ganaposki. not exactly Jane Doe, right?), and when i emailed them they said that they didn't know i existed and picked the last name from a phone book. (considering there are maybe 7 Ganaposkis in the world, I have a pretty good idea of where she lives, but i digress...)
It freaked me out, since not only does she write fan fic (insert ambivalent grimace/shrug--so does my sister--harry potter sex fests, no less-- but i'm ambivalent about ownership/authorship and wouldn't want folks writing with my characters. selfish, but that's me.), but she's only a year younger than me and if someone did do a search for "me", they would find stuff about *her* that was plausibly "me"... but really really wasn't. a lot.
I asked her nicely if she could stop using it (or use a variant, whatever) but she said she had been using it for over ten years (yes? and? i've been using it for over 20) and she wanted to "share" it... and while it is my name, it seems that legally, there's nothing i can do about it.
(Not that i *really* want to sic scary lawyers at people.. even if I could afford it...)
...and it's not exactly identity theft, since she didn't do it on purpose and isn't trying to get credit cards using it, but...
it felt/feels icky.
...because she technically has that anonymity, the chance to re-create herself that the internet allows--but some unwitting person could associate her writing with mine, and suddenly my rl identity is tied to someone else's assumed one that i have no control over.
twitch.
handles, i like. they tell you a lot about people. (i, for instance, am bossy and have been since i was 4 years old. and a little controlling. maybe.)
i've participated in a moo, and over the years switched from a handle to my real name, because to make a community, you have to "be" the same person/character or you don't create relationships (er, the base of a community, imho...)
...and if i'm being the same person, why not be myself? (this transition happened to friends there, too.)
digression: also with me, and at least one other-- we used the online forum to try out selves, and found that our rl self became more like the online one, when we discovered that people actually liked our senses of humor, etc...
so... yeah, i cherish aspects of online anomymity. but when your anonymity/creation affects other people in a significant way (financially, stalking, whatever) i find it... much less defenseable.
i am curious how people feel about pen names in this context? (like for romance novels, or when an author has been pigeonholed in one genre and wants to branch out)
is it anonymity? is it creating another identity? would you be pissed or pleased if you found out that a book you had been reading was actually written by someone you already felt you had an author-reader relationship with? would it change the original relationship or would you keep them separate? (er, does anyone else have one-sided love affairs with authors/author identities, or is it just me?)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
online identity
Date: 2004-10-29 12:30 pm (UTC)A few months ago, googling my (real) name, i discovered that someone else was using it.
This is bizarre to me (my RL name is Alia Ganaposki. not exactly Jane Doe, right?), and when i emailed them they said that they didn't know i existed and picked the last name from a phone book. (considering there are maybe 7 Ganaposkis in the world, I have a pretty good idea of where she lives, but i digress...)
It freaked me out, since not only does she write fan fic (insert ambivalent grimace/shrug--so does my sister--harry potter sex fests, no less-- but i'm ambivalent about ownership/authorship and wouldn't want folks writing with my characters. selfish, but that's me.), but she's only a year younger than me and if someone did do a search for "me", they would find stuff about *her* that was plausibly "me"... but really really wasn't. a lot.
I asked her nicely if she could stop using it (or use a variant, whatever) but she said she had been using it for over ten years (yes? and? i've been using it for over 20) and she wanted to "share" it... and while it is my name, it seems that legally, there's nothing i can do about it.
(Not that i *really* want to sic scary lawyers at people.. even if I could afford it...)
...and it's not exactly identity theft, since she didn't do it on purpose and isn't trying to get credit cards using it, but...
it felt/feels icky.
...because she technically has that anonymity, the chance to re-create herself that the internet allows--but some unwitting person could associate her writing with mine, and suddenly my rl identity is tied to someone else's assumed one that i have no control over.
twitch.
handles, i like. they tell you a lot about people. (i, for instance, am bossy and have been since i was 4 years old. and a little controlling. maybe.)
i've participated in a moo, and over the years switched from a handle to my real name, because to make a community, you have to "be" the same person/character or you don't create relationships (er, the base of a community, imho...)
...and if i'm being the same person, why not be myself? (this transition happened to friends there, too.)
digression: also with me, and at least one other-- we used the online forum to try out selves, and found that our rl self became more like the online one, when we discovered that people actually liked our senses of humor, etc...
so... yeah, i cherish aspects of online anomymity. but when your anonymity/creation affects other people in a significant way (financially, stalking, whatever) i find it... much less defenseable.
i am curious how people feel about pen names in this context? (like for romance novels, or when an author has been pigeonholed in one genre and wants to branch out)
is it anonymity? is it creating another identity? would you be pissed or pleased if you found out that a book you had been reading was actually written by someone you already felt you had an author-reader relationship with? would it change the original relationship or would you keep them separate? (er, does anyone else have one-sided love affairs with authors/author identities, or is it just me?)
lovingly,
alia