Why Use a Screen Name?

Is There Any Good Reason to Use a Screen Name?

So, is a screen name a good idea, or no? Particularly in the age of Facebook and the real names requirement.

I was inspired by this post in Angela Connor‘s blog. If you do not know Angela Connor, I urge you to check her out; her blog is extremely insightful and is still one of my favorites.

Her ideas make a great deal of sense, and I think some of this is why the Blizzard forum experiment in real names for users was such an immediate and egregious flop.

Masks

The internet, like it or not, is for many people a place of masks. You pretend to be younger and thinner than you are. Or you pretend to be unmarried. You pretend to be a Klingon. Or you are a teenager and pretend to be an adult.

Or you pretend to be another gender or richer or lovelier or more conservative or whatever.

And the masks can be freeing to many. Perhaps they were freeing when the ancient Greeks donned them while performing Oedipus Rex for the first time. I think there is more of a place for them than perhaps we would all care to admit.

Because there seems to be a value to being able to put makeup on one’s face, or wear a Halloween costume.

Screen Name Unreality

And this is not the same as our reality. It is related but not identical. Maybe the librarian who goes out for Halloween dressed as a dance hall girl wants to be known as someone who takes risks (and maybe foolish ones, at that).

But when the morning after rolls around, she is back in the library helping others do research.

A Screen Name Allows for (Somewhat) Anonymous Commenting

This kind of anonymous commenting allows for something like this. Because the sympathetic guy who is really seething inside gets to call people out.

He gets to be a bully and be an all-around racist jerk (I have worse names, but do not wish to besmirch my own blog) behind one screen name.

But then he surfs to a different site where he can chat up the ladies with his sensitive New Age guy demeanor, all behind another screen name. And then when the time to log off comes, he goes home and kisses his wife and plays with his children. And this is all just one guy.

Facebook and Screen Names

To comment openly through a full, correct name (usually) medium like Facebook would be to cut off the dance hall girl. And it would stifle the racist jerk, the ladies’ man, and any number of other secret selves in favor of a drab and ordinary world.

Even on a news site, which is pretty much the definition of drab unless there is some sort of a hot story, the jerk, the dancer and the Romeo all want to be free.

Still, Facebook has been a runaway success. But some of that is still screen names. A person with Au at the end of their name is identifying to all and sundry that they are on the autism spectrum.

I have seen last names like Lionchaser and Orange and Juneberry. The chances are extremely good that none or most of these are real.

But does that actually matter, in the grand scheme of things?

Screen Names and Reviews

Hey, are you writing the occasional bad reviews, but still want to remain friends with the people you’re reviewing? Then you might just need to be using a screen name, eh?

Who is Real?

But we should never take their opinions as seriously as the real people. Because, even though those personae live in real people’s skins, it is the real people who vote, marry, pay taxes, work, make the news and are members of our real society.

The trouble is telling them apart and knowing which one is real.

Can you always tell? I bet you cannot. Not always.

ChatGPT Adds to the Confusion on Screen Names and More

Beyond whether the name is real, are the posts real these days? A few years ago, a friend who runs a writing contest had to jettison a few entries because they were written by AI.

AI is only going to get better and better—and more unnerving—as time marches on.

We may very well look back on questions about screen names as being a quaint little hiccup. You know, right before the Apocalypse.