What's in a name?

I’m always very cagey about names. Unless someone gives their name themselves on their site I don’t use people’s real names here. Likewise I am very much against someone using my real name when I am using an alias. It’s up to me if I want my personal information published online. Pretty much everyone reading this knows my real name, and I theirs, and yet still, it’s all aliases.

There’s no mystery to this for me – the internet gives people a chance to reinvent themselves and to play around with different personas. Like RPGs you can be someone else for a while. Having played RPGs and having had a very very inventive imagination in games as a child, I find this totally normal and consider it healthy; a form of escapism that allows you to cope with the normality of real life. What I find odd is people who think escapists are somehow trying to avoid responsibility and are trying to actually escape. I think there is that aspect in real life – you can run from your problems, and you can run successfully if you are clever enough and determined enough. Whether it’s the right decision or not depends on the situation. What I’m referring to are people who view online escapists as trying to shirk responsibility in some way. The “you’ve made your bed and now you have to lie in it” attitude. Well, no, actually. I don’t. I can leave my bed, (made or unmade) bugger off and go and find another bed. Or maybe a futon. This doesn’t have the effect it does in real life – you don’t have to abandon your family in the process. If you do abandon online friends then presumably they will understand, or they would have been good enough friends to have perhaps had your real life contact details.

I’m dancing around the main topic. I’ll clarify. I had a discussion with some people about the acceptability of leaving an online community and returning with a new persona. To leave and return to this community without having a serious break was not acceptable, so you would have to return with your dark glasses and false nose on. That sort of subterfuge is required to create a new persona anyway. There were significant numbers of people in the discussion who felt that to do this was to shirk responsibility and to decieve. I have to agree. However I don’t care that it is that. If someone has fucked up their reputation or got themselves into a hole I don’t care if they leave as Bob and return as Fred and I don’t know. Why should I care? Has it hurt me in any way? Is my life any the worse for this deception? No. Is that person’s life better after being able to get a fresh start? Hopefully.

In real life you are bound with real life responsibilities and are limited in your ability to escape to something different. I hate that some people feel the same restrictions should be instilled on online life where nothing is life and death, and nothing really matters. Online life is one big game. And what really amuses me is that the people with this opinion were playing an RPG at the time… reinventing yourself much?

Oh and yes, on Sunday Mr Gorgeous was working, but sadly I couldn’t get his photo as I would have had to have taken it with him watching me, just before he reported me to the police for stalking and oh bugger I forgot to renew my library book today. Ack. That’s gonna be expensive…