Who the hell are you?
April 6th, 2009 by sbalb
While planning on the phone for his arrival in Oxford tomorrow, I just referred to Looby as, er, Looby. He isn’t called Looby. Well, you know: any more than I’m called “sbalb” or “smallbeds”. It confused him quite a bit, and then his confusion confused me. I’m about to go upstairs and fox the hell out of K, and frankly you’re lucky I can still type, we’re all so confused here.
A few years ago I made the decision to use a name as close as possible to my own for almost all of my online identities, apart from this one. That was because I’d lost patience with almost all of the reasons for choosing a pseudonym online, apart from what I felt to me was the most important one: to give certain things a bit of distance, both respectfully from my employment and conveniently from my own social background; also, to hopefully keep a bit of character and colour, that full knowledge of my own demographic and circumstances might have precluded.
Did keeping this pseudonym work? I’m not certain. Without offering you a peek at the man behind the curtain, I can still say I’ve felt able to write more freely here than otherwise; but to what end, I don’t really know. All I’m certain of is that, if Looby finds himself being referred to over the next few days variously as Looby, Albert, C— or Mister John Cage’s Disco Classics, he’s only got himself to blame. At a push, he can take it out on that sbalb chap.
Tough call, anonymity or not. I got fired for saying the wrong thing on my blog. So I decided that I would never discuss work in my name again.
So you are meeting a virtual friend for the first time tomorrow: good luck!I have been online for more than three years and it never crossed my mind to do it – not for lack of affection towards my internet friends but rather because it feels like a different world.
As regards the previous comment, I blog anonymously, I seldom speak of my work and I keep my blog private. Excess caution?
@Brennig, I did have questions asked at my previous place of work, and I’m aware that my boss is intermittently following me here: make of that what you will. I never discuss clients or direct competitors, is my only hard and fast rule. Whining about co-workers is permitted, as long as they’re pretty much unidentifiable.
@May, it all went rather swimmingly. We’d met briefly in a pub last year, but he turned out to be the ideal house guest. He even unmade the attic bed before he left: either that or he got tangled up hopelessly in the sheet the night before.