In the last two years or so, I’ve made a radical change in how I use the Internet: I try to be myself. This doesn’t mean that I’ve been shy about my love of Twitter or that I’ve tried to pretend to be something other than an academic who likes music. What being myself online has meant to me has been achieved through using one username across most of the Internet and one avatar. Oh, and that username is my real name.
I made this decision after using a handful of other pseudonyms around the Internet since the mid-1990s with an eye towards hacking Google. As I was busy on the academic job market, I began to realize that while I had invested a large portion of my life into the Internet, that there wasn’t a way for anyone to find this material. And let’s face it: as someone who needed (still needs, by the way, for the 2010-2011 academic year, in case you’re looking) a decent job, I wanted to give people a way to find me. Being anonymous wasn’t going to help me.
The result was a revamping of almost every account I have online to use the same standard username. In many places, I found that I could use an OpenID linked to one of my other accounts. This not only continued my drive to use one name, it also saved me time in registering with new sites (and gave me less passwords to remember). I also updated my Google profile with information about me. I also went so far as to register my own domain…and yes, I did the vanity thing and named it after myself. If you don’t want to host your own domain, you can use a service like Interfolio or Academia.edu to create an online portfolio.
Once that was done, I came up with an avatar that I felt comfortable using everywhere I went: my face. 
(This took many more attempts than I’d care to admit.) I uploaded the photo to places where I had accounts, and then I created a Gravatar account. When I register at many other sites using email addresses that I have linked to in Gravatar, my chosen avatar is brought into the new site quickly. (In fact, this is how readers here at Prof. Hacker can get their avatars appended to their comments.)
Of course, I can’t pretend to have started this movement to be yourself online. In many ways, the power of Facebook is linked to the pressure the system exerts on its users for them to be themselves and to use their real names on the service. Look at the panic that came with the great Facebook land grab this June. Still, I find that many of my colleagues are reluctant to have a presence online or to be themselves. Although there are of course some privacy concerns connected with being indexed by Google (or even Bing or Cuil), I believe we can and should take control of our identities online. And it turns out it’s not that hard.
What are your thoughts about being yourself online?
29 Comments
After getting my Major, I decided that was a time to sort of renovate myself in a similar way that Brian describes: So far, I have tried to get every service under the sun registered under my disembvoweled pseudonym, Alxjrvs. It’s easy to do, convenient, and pretty cool once you get it all under control.
I’ve more or less done something similar. I typically publish under my real name or my one universal username, chutry, a mashup of my first and last name that I made while standing in line at a Best Buy trying to come up with a login for MSN. It makes it a lot easier to keep track of my online “presence.”
I’m in full agreement with the reasons you give for using your real name. I do the same, though in my case the handle is first initial, last name (I’ve got a few exceptions to clean up). My domain name is firstnamelastname.
I follow enough blogs and their comments to think there’s an additional good reason, though. Some of the nastiest comments I’ve ever seen on blogs come from anonymous users. It’s a lot harder to behave in uncivil fashion when using an online identity that reflects one’s real name.
I agree with your punchline, Brian: “I believe we can and should take control of our identities online.” If we don’t, then there’s a chance that other people may define our online identities for us. For instance, the last time I checked, I had three not-so-great comments about me on RateMyProfessors. If that were all there were online about me, I would be worried. However, since I’ve been active in blogging and tweeting and have a home page all with my real name, I’m not worried. I’ve put my own ideas and activities out there for people to find, so they’ll be able to put those RMP comments in context.
I am slightly schizophrenic regarding my naming schemes. The coin is in the air. I suspect it will land on transparency and true names. The “searchability” is what draws me towards wanting to use my real name. “Big Brother” being on the internet, makes me not want to, although that doesn’t seem to matter. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/21/outing.anonymous.bloggers/index.html
WORD with Amy Cavender. Somehow, using a real name promotes civility. I use my initial and last name as a user ID, and my domain is my full name.
I mashed up a response to you with a recent Lifehacker post about Personas that you can read here.
Ah, I hadn’t thought of the possibility you raise in your post, Karen. It’s a good point. What I had in mind were more the truly anonymous commenters that it’s hard to tell apart, not those who may use a stable online username other than (whether instead of or in addition to) one that reflects their real name.
Thanks for introducing me to Personas. Interestingly, it profiles me quite differently depending on whether or not I include the initials of my religious congregation after my name.
My fan name is stable, and I’ve also aggregated all the data under a single username. Some fans use different pseuds for different fandoms, or for different genres of fan fiction (het or slash, for example). I’ve also published a personal/scholarly essay under my fanfic pseud. But I decided to start posting under my RL name so I’d get “credit” for my work in fan studies.
Others have commented that Personas is interesting, but if you have a common name, it doesn’t work well. With my name, that’s not a problem!
Something about this topic was featured in BBC News’ technology blog today, might be worth a look: http://bit.ly/4vlJyI
I guess I will be the lone dissenter!
I get what you’re saying – it’s easier to have one online presence, it encourages accountability, one can get credit for one’s work, and so on.
However, for me, it really depends. My presence online as “Rana” – the name I began commenting and blogging under back in 2002 – is remarkably stable in all the ways you describe. In fact, I get more recognition as Rana and am easier to find online than I am under my legal name, which is very common. (Adding to the confusion, several of the people with my first and last name share professional and personal interests.)
Initially, it was for self-preservation that I started with a pseudonym (which I distinguish from being anonymous – I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into this online version of myself, and threats to my reputation are real ones). Not all of us are fortunate enough to be mono-focused enough that our online presence is oriented around our careers or a small set of acceptable interests. And, especially in the early years of blogging, simply having an online presence – let alone one that expressed ideas critical of the establishment – was enough to brand you as a hopelessly self-centered complainer who liked to air their dirty laundry in public.
There is also the gendered aspect of this – note, right here in this very thread – that most of the commenters are male. “Rana” is not exactly gender-neutral (and my gravatar also sends out gendered and racial cues), so it doesn’t offer me reliable protection from the sorts of gendered attacks and commentary that women frequently face online. But it does allow me a bit of psychic distance – and it makes it far less likely that a stalker could find and harass me offline. And, sometimes, it’s simply that I don’t feel that my employers need to know about my personal life if I don’t choose to tell them about it. There are many benefits from living online and socializing there – but that’s not to be taken as a statement that I want my life to be an open book to anyone and everyone, even if much of it occurs in a public space.
In other words, I think you’re being a bit too blithe about why it’s better to use one’s real name. It depends on why one is online, and what one expects to happen offline as a result of having an online presence.
I do use my legal name in a few limited fora, such as Academia and Facebook and at a few sites where I want professional credit for my work – but that’s only a small part of who I am online, and my use of pseudonym reflects that duality.
Rana, you’re not alone. As someone who has written under my “real” name and a pseudonym, I recognize the value in both. There can be many reasons why someone would choose an online presence that does not attach to an actual name. One of my research interests is porn, which I did a conference presentation on this year, so it’s now a bit out of the bag that I study it. But for the past few years, I have been participating in discussion boards and blogs that are porn-related under a pseudonym. For one, it’s often the community norm to do that.* Two, I was not going to make my porn research public until I had something to show for it, like that conference presentation. Is shame involved? Maybe (and I have an article coming out on shame in Feminist Teacher next year). But I just wanted to get a firm handle on what I thought and why I thought it before I was challenged on what I was doing. A pseudonym gave me the space to do that.
If all the aspects of your professional and personal life are considered “normal” by most people in your professional and personal circles, then you might feel it’s easy to use your “real” name. But if you are expressing thoughts about gender, race, and sexuality, a pseudonym could help you out a life. Hell, after seeing George Tiller get killed, I wonder if a pseudonym can save your life (in that you can go on message boards and challenge those who praised his murder and not worry (or worry less) that those people will find your address and confront you face-to-face).
Hmmm, I’m now wondering about the relationship between the use of actual names and male, white, heterosexual privilege. If you live in a state of privilege, is it easier to pur your name and face out there?
*Actually, that leads to a question. If it’s the community norm to use a pseudonym, why disrupt those norms? And I know, I know. The answer depends on why that’s the norm. Is it used to create a space for verbal violence or verbal protection, for example.
Nels, I think that exploring “the relationship between the use of actual names and male, white, heterosexual privilege” sounds very much like something to be explored. It would also be interesting, as Rana suggests, to look at how avatar use is related to race/class/gender.
Thanks for this perspective, Rana. I’m actually surprised that we haven’t seen more dissent thus far on my take on being yourself online. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the self-selected audience of Prof. Hacker at the moment.
What’s more, I think that my narrative is reflective of a change that has finally begun working its way through the academy. It’s no longer a hanging offense to be a person who engages in online communities (even if those communities are oriented around scholarship). You’re certainly right that owing up to who you were in 2002 online was a choice that was more fraught with consequences than it is at the present. I wonder to what degree we can lay the cause of this shift at the feet of Facebook.
One of the reasons that I thought about writing this post was because of all the contacts I have made and ongoing professional opportunities that have come to me in part because of my highly public persona online. If I worked/wrote under a pseudonym online, the pseudonym might have received these opportunities, but they might have been harder to actualize in the real world. What’s been your experience in “being” Rana when you’re offline? Or is that something that you don’t choose to do?
The issue about opportunities is indeed one that I’m struggling with. I’m in the process (long, painful) of transitioning out of academia, and I’d rather like to get credit for all the writing work I’ve done online, you know?
The thing I’ve found, though, is that any professional opportunities I’ve gotten from being online are more the result of networking with friends than as the result of some random person seeing my online work and buzzing me up with an offer. The people I consider my friends know who I am offline, and so I don’t need to out myself in order to benefit from those networks. It does make it a bit amusing when we meet to collaborate in real life – as at conferences – as we have to figure out how to refer to each other, but that’s about the only hitch.
Producing work online under my legal, professional name only really matters if either (a) I want attention from people I don’t know personally, or (b) I want to claim such work among colleagues or family to whom I don’t want to out myself.
As I said, I’m findable under my real name on Academia and LinkedIn and Facebook, and at my professional photography gallery, but I tweet and blog and comment at most blogs under my pseudonym. If I trust someone, I can always out myself. If I’m already “out” online, I don’t have that option; they can find my work online without my permission or knowledge. Personally, I prefer retaining that bit of control, illusory though it may be.
Thanks for such a thoughtful post about pseuds! I do a lot in the fan world, and everything is pretty much published under a pseud.
As I note in a comment above, I have actually published (in print) using my pseud, but I decided to use my (admittedly unique) RL name for fan things to get “credit” for it. The cost of this: I am now engaging in dialogue outside my community, esp. because I moved some conversations off LiveJournal and onto my Wordpress blog. I basically traded emotionally satisfying fan engagement for shouting into the wind–nobody listens to me at Wordpress, it feels like. This decision has gender implications that tie into credibility. Annoying all around.
I think the desire to use RL names is just a desire to separate the troll from the thoughtful poster, but in the fan world, the pseud is carefully cultivated and isn’t, as you note, anonymous in the least. I edit a journal about fan studies, Transformative Works and Cultures, and although we discourage people from publishing or serving under their pseuds (for reasons we discussed at extreme length having to do with credibility outside the field, and how, in fan studies, we will be judged, no matter what we do our how thoughtful our remarks), if someone feels strongly, they may do so.
One concern for us is grad students: they may think, “Cool!” and publish or serve under their pseud, but later, come promotion and tenure time, they may regret it, especially if there’s some reason (writing explicit slash?) why they wouldn’t want the t&p committee to link their fan pseud with their RL name. We therefore want them to think carefully about this.
Long-winded way of saying: the decision to cultivate a persona under the pseud, in my community, is entirely valid, and indeed, there may be good reasons to not link it to RL name. It is entirely reasonable to post under the pseud. But this decision has long-term implications that ought to be carefully considered, and publications may have issues with a perceived disconnect in credibility.
Excellent points from Rana, and I’d also like to say that I’d like to read more disagreement like this in the ProfHacker comment threads: I hope none of our readers feel like there’s a party line that everyone has to obey. Our conversations will be much more interesting, more useful, and more intellectually honest if we are engaged with others who don’t already think the way we do.
For example, once Nels left a comment that problematized the idea of an instructor choosing to make all of her or his evaluations public, the discussion related to that particular post got a lot more interesting.
Tedra Osell has had some interesting things to say about these issues.
I agree with the anti-pseudonymous sentiment. At MediaCommons, we’ve even made it a policy that real names are required, as the idea of having an effective scholarly site of conversation and dissemination would be impossible without a clear tie to a real identity.
I am trying hard to not feel offended by this comment, I have to say. The implication that my contributions to a conversation are less valid or useful or informed because of the name I use is, dare I say, an arrogant one.
I also find myself wondering how, exactly, you go about confirming people’s identities. If I signed in as Gloria Makepeace, or James Rodriguez, how would you know to check?
Again, Rana, you’re not alone. I can understand a particular site having a policy, but the general judgment does seem harsh.
I’m reminded about something those of you reading my blog back in 2005 will remember. I wrote about a student of mine who had published a controversial essay in the local newspaper. I wrote to defend her, and I got a lot of flak including emails, voice mails, and colleagues stopping me in the hallway to ask what I was thinking. I left campus crying more than once those days.
I sometimes wish, for my student and for me, that we had made the same points anonymously. The ideas would have still be out there. But we would have felt safer walking around our own campus.
Jason, maybe MediaCommons is a place where the topics discussed don’t leave people afraid to drive to work. But if the ideas are that inflammatory, why deny a writer the protection of a pseudonym? I had another student write about being raped. Someone wanted to publish her account on an alternative website. She agreed, as long as her name wasn’t attached. I don’t think the removal of her name lessened the power of her words. And, frankly, a man (or woman or transperson) telling her that she needs to use her full name or her account would not be a part of “effective scholarly [. . .] conversation and dissemination” is offensive. If you are just talking about your particular website, then I understand. But if you are saying that names must always be attached for words to have impact, then I respectfully disagree.
Behind-the-scenes, we actually debated a similar policy–real names only–here at Prof. Hacker, and decided against it.
In addition to the contexts raised by Rana and Nels, many graduate students (or faculty members who are not in full-time or tenure-track lines) deserve to have some choice about what they personally disclose. For example, certain conversations about working conditions are less plausible if people are compelled to link to a real name.
It seems to me that while anonymous, drive-by trolling is a problem in any forum, the option of a pseudonym is important.
I have to disagree with the assertion that only by using our real names can we make useful conversations to scholarly conversations. (An assertion that is not, by the way, what Brian’s post above is making.)
In early conversations with Jason about ProfHacker, I advocated having a policy that we wouldn’t allow anonymous commenters but that we would welcome comments from those using pseudonyms or real names.
There’s no reason why “an effective scholarly site of conversation and dissemination” cannot take place if participants are using pseudonyms. In the English-speaking world, such practices have been taking since at least the early eighteenth century, when–to cite only the most famous examples–The Spectator and The Tatler were incredibly popular periodicals published and distributed with essays whose authors were using obvious and playful pseudonyms.
The problem is “drive-by trolling,” where a commenter creates a fake name on the fly just to leave some mean-spirited snark. In my opinion, that person adds no real value to the conversation, just malice.
But pseudonyms? That’s a different story altogether.
Sorry if my brief comment offended – not the intent in the least to anyone who chooses to be anonymous. To clarify: at MediaCommons, we are devising a “peer-to-peer review” system as an alternative to traditional blind peer review. A number of us believe that the traditional concept of blind review has negative consequences, and there is a lot of benefit to having the review process both named and public. Reviewers can be held accountable in public for their comments, so that somebody couldn’t trash or glorify a piece without being known as the reviewer. Reviewers will gain a reputation for how they engage in the site, and that reputation will be tied to their broader scholarly profile.
Given that, pseudonyms run counter to the intent of being open and public in the review process (and usernames can be confirmed by an institutional or published email address). That’s what I meant by the admittedly opaque phrase “an effective scholarly site of conversation and dissemination,” not suggesting it included everyplace where academics might post.
Beyond the specifics of MediaCommons and peer-to-peer review, I do think there’s a difference in commenting or posting to a site about a personal experience, or exploring a taboo research area, or writing fan fiction, versus commenting on an academic blog or online publication. I do get a bit perturbed when pseudonyms comment on my (signed) blog posts, as it suggests a lack of mutual respect that we all own up to what we write. And I don’t personally like to be debating with a pseudonym, even if it’s a consistent online identity – I’d rather be able to connect what people say to who they are.
As for Nels’s example defending a student, I’ve been in situations that I’ve made public comments that ruffled feathers – I think it’s a great lesson for students to own up to them and be accountable for our own opinions and beliefs.
Hmm. I get what you’re saying, and the issue of the reviewing part of that makes a lot of sense to me (especially since my manuscript-publication process was derailed by an anonymous reviewer who had clearly not understood the book – I mean, like didn’t even notice the main theoretical approach!).
I do feel somewhat perturbed myself by your assumption that knowing my professional affiliation would make a difference in how you assess what I have to say about a particular topic. It seems to me that that is a good way to reinforce existing hierarchies – Professor Big Name at Top Five University gets more respect than Adjunct Who at Small Community College – and works counter to the notion that it is the argument and the evidence that counts, not the status of the person expressing it.
Your method of checking identities would also fail in my own case, as I lack that kind of institutional support or permanence. Indeed, most of my colleagues at my particular institution are, like me, part-timers with no official presence anywhere on our institution’s website. So what would I have to do, then, fax you a copy of my degree? And how would you know that it was me, and not one of the other folks who share my name?
It seems like a lot of work just to have a conversation with you, honestly.
Which means, then, that you are choosing to limit your exposure to those who might have perspectives from outside the institution, perspectives that may well be valuable to you. It’s not unlike how many established people, comfortably ensconced in their various institutions, fail to realize just how expensive and difficult it is to attend conferences if you don’t have institutional backing. A couple of my friends, who are thoughtful people with rather impressive reputations both on and offline, were unable to attend a conference on which they’d been invited – invited! – to be panelists because they are both independent scholars and don’t have the kind of travel grants and such that most of y’all seem to take for granted.
So while I can see that the sort of ID-checking you’re describing might work for a small, limited sort of interaction between reviewers and reviewees, it – to be crass – sucks when you are talking about the exchange of scholarly ideas.
You’ve basically admitted that personal status is more important to you than the content of a person’s ideas – and I continue to find that more than a little appalling.
You also continue to be blind to the ways that privilege operates within and without the institution; you naively argue that everyone should be able to “connect what people say to what people are” as if there are no penalties for allowing people to do that. Not everyone is going to use that information to merely confirm identity; there are plenty of nasty petty people in academia – just like anywhere – and sometimes it is not safe to be “out” in public – not safe as in vulnerable to physical or professional attack – however much it might make you “perturbed” to not be able to identify someone to your personal satisfaction.
It is also worth noting that it’s not just one’s colleagues who might see this information – once such information is loose on the internet, it is fair game for anyone with a computer and an internet connection. There is no ivory tower on the internet, any more than there is in actual life.
Like I said, I don’t like debating with pseudonyms – you’re launching accusations at my real name without placing yourself in a position to own up to those claims. I think you misread my comments, but I’m going to leave it at that. -Jason
sigh
I’m not launching accusations at your name.
I am challenging the points you have written HERE, in this thread.
I have not bothered to Google you. I don’t know who you are or what you teach, or where you teach. For that matter, I haven’t even bothered to figure out whether “Jason Mittell” is your real name, or even if there IS a “Jason Mittell.”
What would “owning up to those claims” entail, honestly?
Would my words be any more or less true if I told you that I am Janice Franklin, Professor of Communications, at Little Rock College? Would my points be more valid and make more sense if I told you that I have a PhD in Mathematics from NYU and graduated in 1984? Would your arguments be strengthened if you knew that I had written a paper on the nine-lined ground squirrel and the effects of pesticide drift on its populations?
I find it interesting that you feel we are unequal ground here because of how we choose to represent ourselves – and you know what?
That proves my point.
You seem to feel attacked and vulnerable because you are letting it all hang out in an open forum – and, hello! That’s exactly why having the option of using a pseudonym is important!
I am completely owning up to my claims. They are mine, and I will continue to defend them to the best of my ability. Perhaps, you feel, I am not really doing this, in that I’m unwilling to put my personal and professional life at risk in order to please your sense of ownership, but, note this:
You’re not owning up to your claims either. You are fleeing the conversation, and refusing to defend what you have said.
So much for ownership and intellectual honesty.
(btw – ProfHacker folks – if this is becoming annoying to you, please let me know. I think I’ve made my point, even if Jason refuses to accept me as a valid debating partner.)
ProfHacker is a site that welcome comments from writers who choose to use pseudonyms as well as from those who choose to use non-photographic–even non-human–avatars.
As the last half-decade of academic blogging has made clear, valuable scholarly exchange online does not require the use of real names.
And as ought to be made clear by the comment threads of such venues as Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education–not to mention countless scholarly listservs–the use of real names does not ensure valuable scholarly exchange.
There are good reasons, as Brian explains above, to “be yourself online.” As Rana explains, however, there are also good reasons not to. Each writer needs to make her or his own decision, given their particular circumstances.
I would add, further, that your assumption-
I do think there’s a difference in commenting or posting to a site about a personal experience, or exploring a taboo research area, or writing fan fiction, versus commenting on an academic blog or online publication.
Moreover, as I said, your distinction is a distinction without a functional reality, as “through the magic of Google” it is easy for information to bleed outside the tidy boundaries you seem to envision enclosing “commenting on an academic blog” away from those who might be searching for other things. I mean, hell, man, haven’t you ever run into a student in a supermarket? If you can’t maintain the boundaries between personal and professional life offline, what on earth makes you think that they operate more rigorously online?
You’re trying to argue that your desire to create a safe little space for you and your colleagues on the internet justifies prejudice. That’s the logic of the gated community, and it works about as well online as it does off.
As someone who clearly falls in the category of undesirables beyond the gates, you’re going to have to work a lot harder to convince me that there’s more at work here than simple prejudice against people who you believe are not your intellectual equals.
…
And now, at this point, you’re probably angry at me for assuming things about you that aren’t true, and I can sense you working up a rebuttal along the lines that I’m just some random person who doesn’t know the least thing about you, and that it’s only because I’m “hiding” behind this pseudonym that I’m able to say such things to you.
And you know what? That’s the POINT. My sense of you, and your ideas, is based on what you have written here, not on whether or not I was able to Google your name and see that you teach Blah Blah at Whatever U. I’ve been writing under a pseudonym for nearly a decade now, and blogging for nearly three-quarters of that time, and I can safely say that my expertise in this area is both solid and respected, and probably outweighs yours. If that reputation, and that body of work – spread throughout a hundred blogs and comments threads – means nothing to you without there being a “real” name attached to it, that’s your problem, not mine.
I am “wpw” or “wpwend42″ on almost every website or social network I belong to at this point. I use the animated avatar on my domain on those websites as well because a few years ago I had a troll on a weblog I run who took my images and made fake accounts with me name on other websites spewing racist/misogynistic comments on them. It took me about a year to get rid of them and make amends with some of the sites. Therefore, unless people know me well, now they only see my animated image.
I do have a pseudonym I use to post on a few more sensitive/private topics in a variety of forums…
Well on a variety of sources I have two names on the net I go by. One is a very specific hobby of mine, while another is a professional face I have. So in an attempt to try and separate information, otherwise wouldn’t you think that would be odd if you are trying to communicate in one manner, and end up talking about something else? Facebook is another thing though.
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