While reading this essay I found an alternative to the common explanation why the overwhelming majority of tech/crypto twitter use pseudonyms. At least in crypto it is believed to be a safety mechanism.
BUT with growing pushback on public opinions or not careful wording it makes sense to use pseudonyms to free oneself from the culture wars to a truer version.
Murakami has this throw away line in the intro to Kafka on the Shore where he says, “Being a novelist isn’t such a bad thing. Focus your mind enough and you can be anyone you like.”
Novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, etc are especially fortunate in that their mediums don’t just allow for, but demand the exploration of different identities and characters.
"I can set myself free by creating a playful distance between myself and whatever identity I use as my interface with the world."
Love your work. I stumbled brain researcher Srini Pillay's study observing what happened when trying on different identities. It found those that took on the persona of an eccentric poet when doing creative task vs those that didn't were more creative by their markers. But I loved hearing it from your first hand experience. It also reminds me of Tilda Swinton saying she's not big on identities because they're always changing. I'm interested in psychology so I think of the identity as an accumulated program that can be useful or not and when we're aware of an aspect of identity we can change it... So maybe authenticity is more about the choice than the program we didn't choose when we weren't aware. Like choosing the player in a video game.
This article reminded me of my own coming of age. I too frequented numerous online forums and I think that it was very unusual to choose a user name that had anything to do with the name on your passport. The creativity behind choosing a pseudonymous user name and an avatar image was very much a fun part of the process.
A great thing about user names is, like you say, that ideas are uncoupled from the person and have to be measured by their own merit, since there can be no prejudice about age, gender, country of origin or skin colour if these things remain hidden. I have to admit that I mostly provided some of these informations anyway - certainly my country of origin, but often also my age.
I don't exactly know where I have read it (I think it was the book "Coders at Work"), but I remember an anecdote of a programmer who talked about how liberating it was to discuss programming topics behind the screen of a user name, since he was only about 13 years old at the time and in real life would not have been taken seriously, but online, people took his words at face value and handled him like an adult.
I believe it started with the growing popularity of Facebook that people reverted back to using their real name and face for their online identity.
Although this doesn't relate to pseudonyms or writing but more of an "action" mode, the recent Linklater movie Hit Man riffs on some of these themes in entertaining fashion (the main character even philosophizes about it toward the end). I do think there's something additionally unique about the way identities get reconstructed in public writing contexts, especially online.
I only discovered your newsletter very recently, so I really hope you're able to keep writing after January! Maybe if you can give readers some concrete stats before then on exactly how many more paid subscriptions would be necessary to keep you going, that will provide inspiration for enough people to chip in (I certainly would consider). Thanks in the meantime for all your wonderful writing.
Very thoughtful question, I love it! I believe we call it a mask because it isn’t the same as the name on our passport and the same as the way we present ourselves to the world usually. So in that sense, I would call how you usually are a “mask” (under the condition that you modify yourself to be more “acceptable” and believe that this is your true self). With that definition, pseudonyms I would say are parts of your true identity, because their goal is to free you, whereas your usual “mask” constrains you. I’m part of a psychodrama group and this is what happens to me every time we gather. I feel free during scenes, playing different parts of myself or of others, and also during the discussions after the scenes. But then I put my mask on during breaks when we talk about “normal stuff”. Thinking about it, the difference comes because in my mind the goal changes - during scenes the goal is therapy (and thus, authenticity) and during breaks the goal becomes social acceptance (thus, some inauthenticity appears). The same is with our usual “mask” and pseudonyms. The goal of the former is keeping social status, likeability, etc. and the goal of the latter is exploration without constraints (i.e. authenticity). What do you think?
Appreciate your thoughts on this. I think that what we do in our everyday life, that being meeting a friend, loving a special person, doing some business or playing characters like you with your group it's something we do ourselves.
We have normalized the fact of naming it 'mask' to a fragment of our immeasurable being. I believe that we are so vast and our souls are so rich that they can nurture and coexist with many more beings that are myself as well.
Calling it a mask it's like half accepting it and want it to reject it. It's saying that this is not really me, I'm just playing a part when I feel like it.
I get all about the social acceptance and we are conditioned from the time we breathe our first breath.
I can be romantic, write a song or a poem, be in love, love someone. Am I donning a mask when I realize that the same me can be angry, have violent thoughts about injustice in my life and world and think about doing something more primal like to let that anger vent?
This are extremes, and extremes live inside me, they're a part of my soul but I'm not the extremes.
My soul has the capacity and love to have these two aspects cohabiting and I believe it has hundreds of thousands more as well.
These are all me, they are only masks when I fail to recognize that. They are masks when I don't accept them (mostly because of the social programming)
I'm too big and too special as a being just to be polarizing and have to belive that there's just some duality inside of me.
I can live in the extremes of my self and be at peace when I recognize thar those extremes are just a tiny little speck of all that it's me and that I get to choose every second I'm aware.
Great article. Thank you. I don't know what to think right now.
How would you respond to the idea that anonymity is a crutch, that it helps, but also prevents us from discovering how to be ourselves as ourselves sooner?
Don't think it would delay anyone. There is something about learning to be more authentic/spontanteous in all situations, but I don't think practicing will slow that down, though I could imagine some people struggle to take the step to being themselves without pseud. Not sure if that is a problem, and doubt they would have had more success without a pseud.
Have you ever read the work of Fernando Pessoa, arguably Portugal's greatest literary figure? From Wikipedia: "Pessoa was a prolific writer both in his own name and approximately seventy-five other names..He did not define these as pseudonyms because he felt that this did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms, a term he invented."
Interesting reading to start thinking about interaction with other people. I found such thing about pseudonyms within myself recently and think it helps me, especially when there is a hesitation.
Wow... this is something. Thank you for this piece. I have never been comfortable writing online precisely because I kept thinking what my friends and family would think about stuff I wrote.
I like the take. And I agree that pseudonyms can be a powerful way to free yourself. But I do feel like this sort of argument (specifically the obnoxious pseudonym-> just ignore it bit) is oversimplified and flat out unsuccessful. You can look at past examples of pseudonym freedom (take gaming lobbies lol ) or social media project as examples where this optimistic logic was used and there was a resulting away from thoughtfulness and towards quicker, sharper emotions. And it takes increasing effort (self-curtailment) to not embrace that knee jerk way of living, especially when a pseudonym allows for lack of personal risk.
I get that this sort of discussion might not be within the scope of this essay. And I grant that the pseudonyms u explore are not anonymous (they still require some thoughtful frame of reference, they still stand for something).
I’d be curious where your optimism falls against these more concrete problems that pseudonymity/ anonymity pose.
I think the 4chan version of full anonymity is a bit crazy (though it has had its upsides). On social media, I don't think it is a problem. When people complain about it, I think it is a skill issue. I get a lot of pseudonomyous attacks and spam these days but it is easy to deflect and block. I'm not saying that it can't go south in the future with more powerful AI etc, but for now the downsides are so easy to deal with that it is easily worth the upside. It might be that fake names makes things worse for the average user, because they lack skills, but I think this is worth it since it is, for us as a collective, more important that the tools are powerful for power users. I would guess that alts increase variance, and this will cause a lot of downward variance, but it will because of the upward variance create more outliers and a higher mean. Not familiar with the gaming lobbies, so it might not hold there!
Beautiful! Speaks directly to my belief that to adopt a desired identity, you must simply convince yourself that you already are & act accordingly. Of course, it doesn't work for things relying on external influence (like, for example, being wealthy) but that's still probably more than you might expect.
Sometimes I write letters to people that are important to me when there's conflict or misunderstanding. They end up quite poetic--something about how feelings might be expressed more naturally in literature & art? The bolder, more emotionally open me always wants to send them off... but then I usually don't, too afraid to be dismissed or worse, ignored.
Also didn't know that about Kierkegaard, it's fascinating! A fitting technique for communicating new philosophy, I would imagine.
While reading this essay I found an alternative to the common explanation why the overwhelming majority of tech/crypto twitter use pseudonyms. At least in crypto it is believed to be a safety mechanism.
BUT with growing pushback on public opinions or not careful wording it makes sense to use pseudonyms to free oneself from the culture wars to a truer version.
Very insightful, thanks!
Murakami has this throw away line in the intro to Kafka on the Shore where he says, “Being a novelist isn’t such a bad thing. Focus your mind enough and you can be anyone you like.”
Novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, etc are especially fortunate in that their mediums don’t just allow for, but demand the exploration of different identities and characters.
"I can set myself free by creating a playful distance between myself and whatever identity I use as my interface with the world."
Love your work. I stumbled brain researcher Srini Pillay's study observing what happened when trying on different identities. It found those that took on the persona of an eccentric poet when doing creative task vs those that didn't were more creative by their markers. But I loved hearing it from your first hand experience. It also reminds me of Tilda Swinton saying she's not big on identities because they're always changing. I'm interested in psychology so I think of the identity as an accumulated program that can be useful or not and when we're aware of an aspect of identity we can change it... So maybe authenticity is more about the choice than the program we didn't choose when we weren't aware. Like choosing the player in a video game.
This article reminded me of my own coming of age. I too frequented numerous online forums and I think that it was very unusual to choose a user name that had anything to do with the name on your passport. The creativity behind choosing a pseudonymous user name and an avatar image was very much a fun part of the process.
A great thing about user names is, like you say, that ideas are uncoupled from the person and have to be measured by their own merit, since there can be no prejudice about age, gender, country of origin or skin colour if these things remain hidden. I have to admit that I mostly provided some of these informations anyway - certainly my country of origin, but often also my age.
I don't exactly know where I have read it (I think it was the book "Coders at Work"), but I remember an anecdote of a programmer who talked about how liberating it was to discuss programming topics behind the screen of a user name, since he was only about 13 years old at the time and in real life would not have been taken seriously, but online, people took his words at face value and handled him like an adult.
I believe it started with the growing popularity of Facebook that people reverted back to using their real name and face for their online identity.
Although this doesn't relate to pseudonyms or writing but more of an "action" mode, the recent Linklater movie Hit Man riffs on some of these themes in entertaining fashion (the main character even philosophizes about it toward the end). I do think there's something additionally unique about the way identities get reconstructed in public writing contexts, especially online.
I only discovered your newsletter very recently, so I really hope you're able to keep writing after January! Maybe if you can give readers some concrete stats before then on exactly how many more paid subscriptions would be necessary to keep you going, that will provide inspiration for enough people to chip in (I certainly would consider). Thanks in the meantime for all your wonderful writing.
Loved this!!
this got me thinking, which I appreciate.
If wearing a mask in the form of pseudonyms makes you feel more free and genuine. Are you wearing it or taking it off?
Very thoughtful question, I love it! I believe we call it a mask because it isn’t the same as the name on our passport and the same as the way we present ourselves to the world usually. So in that sense, I would call how you usually are a “mask” (under the condition that you modify yourself to be more “acceptable” and believe that this is your true self). With that definition, pseudonyms I would say are parts of your true identity, because their goal is to free you, whereas your usual “mask” constrains you. I’m part of a psychodrama group and this is what happens to me every time we gather. I feel free during scenes, playing different parts of myself or of others, and also during the discussions after the scenes. But then I put my mask on during breaks when we talk about “normal stuff”. Thinking about it, the difference comes because in my mind the goal changes - during scenes the goal is therapy (and thus, authenticity) and during breaks the goal becomes social acceptance (thus, some inauthenticity appears). The same is with our usual “mask” and pseudonyms. The goal of the former is keeping social status, likeability, etc. and the goal of the latter is exploration without constraints (i.e. authenticity). What do you think?
Appreciate your thoughts on this. I think that what we do in our everyday life, that being meeting a friend, loving a special person, doing some business or playing characters like you with your group it's something we do ourselves.
We have normalized the fact of naming it 'mask' to a fragment of our immeasurable being. I believe that we are so vast and our souls are so rich that they can nurture and coexist with many more beings that are myself as well.
Calling it a mask it's like half accepting it and want it to reject it. It's saying that this is not really me, I'm just playing a part when I feel like it.
I get all about the social acceptance and we are conditioned from the time we breathe our first breath.
I can be romantic, write a song or a poem, be in love, love someone. Am I donning a mask when I realize that the same me can be angry, have violent thoughts about injustice in my life and world and think about doing something more primal like to let that anger vent?
This are extremes, and extremes live inside me, they're a part of my soul but I'm not the extremes.
My soul has the capacity and love to have these two aspects cohabiting and I believe it has hundreds of thousands more as well.
These are all me, they are only masks when I fail to recognize that. They are masks when I don't accept them (mostly because of the social programming)
I'm too big and too special as a being just to be polarizing and have to belive that there's just some duality inside of me.
I can live in the extremes of my self and be at peace when I recognize thar those extremes are just a tiny little speck of all that it's me and that I get to choose every second I'm aware.
Great article. Thank you. I don't know what to think right now.
How would you respond to the idea that anonymity is a crutch, that it helps, but also prevents us from discovering how to be ourselves as ourselves sooner?
Don't think it would delay anyone. There is something about learning to be more authentic/spontanteous in all situations, but I don't think practicing will slow that down, though I could imagine some people struggle to take the step to being themselves without pseud. Not sure if that is a problem, and doubt they would have had more success without a pseud.
Have you ever read the work of Fernando Pessoa, arguably Portugal's greatest literary figure? From Wikipedia: "Pessoa was a prolific writer both in his own name and approximately seventy-five other names..He did not define these as pseudonyms because he felt that this did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms, a term he invented."
Yes! He's great.
Interesting reading to start thinking about interaction with other people. I found such thing about pseudonyms within myself recently and think it helps me, especially when there is a hesitation.
This is such a beautiful essay
Wow... this is something. Thank you for this piece. I have never been comfortable writing online precisely because I kept thinking what my friends and family would think about stuff I wrote.
Good! Have fun with it.
I like the take. And I agree that pseudonyms can be a powerful way to free yourself. But I do feel like this sort of argument (specifically the obnoxious pseudonym-> just ignore it bit) is oversimplified and flat out unsuccessful. You can look at past examples of pseudonym freedom (take gaming lobbies lol ) or social media project as examples where this optimistic logic was used and there was a resulting away from thoughtfulness and towards quicker, sharper emotions. And it takes increasing effort (self-curtailment) to not embrace that knee jerk way of living, especially when a pseudonym allows for lack of personal risk.
I get that this sort of discussion might not be within the scope of this essay. And I grant that the pseudonyms u explore are not anonymous (they still require some thoughtful frame of reference, they still stand for something).
I’d be curious where your optimism falls against these more concrete problems that pseudonymity/ anonymity pose.
I think the 4chan version of full anonymity is a bit crazy (though it has had its upsides). On social media, I don't think it is a problem. When people complain about it, I think it is a skill issue. I get a lot of pseudonomyous attacks and spam these days but it is easy to deflect and block. I'm not saying that it can't go south in the future with more powerful AI etc, but for now the downsides are so easy to deal with that it is easily worth the upside. It might be that fake names makes things worse for the average user, because they lack skills, but I think this is worth it since it is, for us as a collective, more important that the tools are powerful for power users. I would guess that alts increase variance, and this will cause a lot of downward variance, but it will because of the upward variance create more outliers and a higher mean. Not familiar with the gaming lobbies, so it might not hold there!
Beautiful! Speaks directly to my belief that to adopt a desired identity, you must simply convince yourself that you already are & act accordingly. Of course, it doesn't work for things relying on external influence (like, for example, being wealthy) but that's still probably more than you might expect.
Sometimes I write letters to people that are important to me when there's conflict or misunderstanding. They end up quite poetic--something about how feelings might be expressed more naturally in literature & art? The bolder, more emotionally open me always wants to send them off... but then I usually don't, too afraid to be dismissed or worse, ignored.
Also didn't know that about Kierkegaard, it's fascinating! A fitting technique for communicating new philosophy, I would imagine.
I cannot tell you how much I love this article. Of course Increased Agency! It's like trying on a hat!
Whenever I try to upgrade to paid it says "customer not found: cus_..."
I'm not sure if that's on your side or substack's but I tried when your last article was published too. Take my money!
Hm! That is weird. I'll talk to Substack to see if we can trace the bug. Thanks for letting me know.