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Alex's avatar

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!

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Spencer's avatar

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.

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Ella's avatar

"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.

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Simon V.'s avatar

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.

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Carina's avatar

Loved this!!

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Chris Schuck's avatar

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.

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Rubén Chávez's avatar

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?

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Sindi Stefanova's avatar

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?

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Rubén Chávez's avatar

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.

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Lucca Costa's avatar

I cannot tell you how much I love this article. Of course Increased Agency! It's like trying on a hat!

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Ian Concannon's avatar

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."

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Henrik Karlsson's avatar

Yes! He's great.

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Joseph's avatar

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?

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Henrik Karlsson's avatar

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.

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John Heavey's avatar

I was just thinking about the significance of Substack being a platform where personal blogs are usually publications with abstract names. Smaller writers here seem to be quite happy to abandon one publication to start a new one, even if the new content appeals to a similar sort of audience.

My assumption is that starting again with a new publication is lower friction and maybe less of an identity crisis than awkwardly starting a new personal blog.

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Miles Kim's avatar

I was recently staying with a friend who leaves his home every day with some kind of intentional persona. His dress ranges from baggy flannels to bespoke suits. One day in high school, he showed up shirtless, with a blazer and a fedora. He's not a faker; in fact, he happens to be one of the most authentic, playful, uninhibited people I know. I'm just recently starting to put this together—that his "authenticity" is based on his ability to fluidly move through different identities... and that my inhibition and introversion may be based on the [impossible] need to be understood in my entirety. I'll be thinking about this piece as I enter an age of experimentation and discovery. Thanks for doing the service of writing this!

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K2D's avatar

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.

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OneThousand&OneLetters's avatar

This is such a beautiful essay

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Silver's avatar

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.

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Henrik Karlsson's avatar

Good! Have fun with it.

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Vanessa Glau's avatar

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.

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