Pseudonymity enables my creative relaxation

[terriko]

It is incredibly relaxing for me to be working on new art projects and posting them under a completely new identity.

I'm working in a style and media in which I'm not proficient, and it's kinda fun to do it risk-free. No one's going to search one of my existing ids and find my first tries at stuff. "She" can experiment and squee over pretty creations and no one will use it as leverage about how I'm not a Serious Academic or Real Programmer or whatever because I'm playing around with some art.

As an incredibly surprising bonus fun thing for me, My alternate identity's already got some fans! Complete strangers are actually excited about seeing more of what she can do!

There's a lot of good reasons to care about pseudonymity. Many of those apply to me; sometimes I use my "real name" or derivatives thereof anyhow. But I'm really digging this playful use of a pseudonymous account to gain access to some extra creative freedom without being totally introverted about it. Fun!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You are right, there's a million and one reasons why the ability to obscure your passport-name online. (I refuse to refer to it as 'real', there's plenty of cases where the name in the passport ain't particularily 'real')

Giving the voiceless a voice is, IMHO perhaps the most important of them. Does anyone think that the bloggers from inside the arabic spring would've dared speaking as freely as many of them did, if they had to do so under their full passport-names ? Doing so would be -extremely- high risk for some of them.

Yes, some fraction of humanity are able to say more or less what we want with few repercussions. Are we willing to sacrifice the rest ? There's plenty of them in our own communities too. How about the teenager with strict mormon parents who's hesitatingly discovering that she's an atheist, or a lesbian. Can she (and will she?) talk freely online, if she has to do so under her passport-name ?

Your example applies too: it's *valuable* to be able to fool around, without it nessecarily coming back to haunt you a decade from now.

[terriko]

The whole point of this post was to not talk about the *important* reasons to use a pseudonym, but rather a single unimportant, playful one. Just sayin' ;)

(You may not know, but I'm part of the team that blogs at geekfeminism.org, which has covered the "nym wars" quite extensively, so I'm actually kinda burned out on all the at-risk reasons and wanted to talk about something fun where no one was risking harm.)

not quite as serious as a repressive regime

[kevix.myopenid.com]

In the not-too-recent past, there were things done in the physical world only. Where records where kept on paper and no one had physical access to them. Artist showed their work in galleries. Folks who where not that well know might have a local gallery show or work put in a local library. No one outside a small group would even know about them or see them. Maybe a few friends or people in your local community. Any criticism about that would most likely be spoken in hushed tones and you'd never hear about it. But when you put things on a searchable, (more or less) public platform, things are different. And now you can get on-line comments by the good, the bad and the ugly. And if you use your passport-name it can have more repercussions. The good side, as you say, can be random folks says that like your work free of some kind of bias based upon: gender, geography, age, etc. The bad side: well that has been talked about alot. If you use a non-passport name, some of the negative can be reduced. The vision some folks have of the internet is a democratizing space that might allow anonymous/psuedonomous free-speech and other good things which include the chance to experiment with art or other aspect of self expression.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm fascinated to hear you're going this route! I've been stewing over a similar conundrum for a while, how to integrate more technical conversation into my online writings without the negative repercussions of geeking out in public. It's difficult to express my passion for circle packing algorithms and obscure typography issues, for example, without alienating the broad general audience (which includes grandparents and very young cousins) who read my blog and facebook updates about movies and misadventures with local wildlife.

New second blog? Pseudonymous writing? Curated nerdy Google circles?

The sad thing about pseudonyms is that while you don't suffer the negative reactions to your work, you never benefit from the positives either. Double-edged sword.

-Jay

[terriko]

I actually find blogging one of the LEAST useful times to spawn a completely separate identity unless there's a privacy issue at hand, because it's much too easy to wind up writing into a vacuum and feeling like no one cares. With artistic communities, it's easy to join a couple of groups and get your artworks posted, and many groups are designed so that members are expected to give a couple of critiques for every piece of their own that they post, so spawning an identity didn't mean losing out on the social aspects of creation. When I spawn a gaming identity, s/he can easily find people to play with because there are matchmaking services. But although there are obviously blogging communities, I've never found one that compared when it comes to feedback and contact. And if you're trying to avoid ever linking the pseudonyms, then you can't really drive traffic yourself easily.

So... given how much I know you like showing off your geekery to friends, I'd think either a linked pseudonym, separate blog, or curated lists of readers would make a lot more sense than a full on new identity. But maybe you'd like the challenge of building up a new readership and self? Obviously it can be fun. :)