People are getting their knickers in a twist because Google+ is insisting they register under their proper names, not pseudonyms. Aw, diddums!
Look, unless you live in a country where there is a real risk to one’s life or liberty, or to one’s family, in using one’s own name online, I don’t see that total anonymity is necessary or desirable.
The culture of online anonymity, which originated in the US (guaranteed by the constitution, apparently), is responsible for one of the most reprehensible features of Internet use – the belief that people can spout whatever toxic, libellous, abusive, drivel they wish, without fear of consequences. And and it has a huge following. I doubt there’s a blogger who has not fallen foul of these cretins more than once. Just as I have no doubt that this post will attract their malign attentions.
Since 2004 when I set up my first website (for myself anyway, though I’ve had an online presence going back to 1996 – in the early years of this century, typing my name into Google would yield 25 or so pages dedicated almost entirely to me; there’s a lot more competition these days, though!), which was initially an overflow site for a magazine column I was writing for the ME Association, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words – possibly a million or more, I really don’t know – and very word I’ve written online has been under my own name. There is – at least for now – no risk to my life or liberty in doing so, so why would I do otherwise. Why would I want to hide?
I’m not ashamed of what I’ve written, nor do I live in fear of official consequences (though here in the UK that might change under the current government), and I stand by every word and every opinion. I can, in all conscience, do no other.
If you write it, have the courage to own it, whether on a blog, a website, or a social network. Or Twitter.
As for Google+, big deal – you don’t like it, leave it alone. The world doesn’t need Google+.
Nor does it need Facebook, though the gullible have been convinced that they can’t live without it. But, hey, the world rolled along quite happily without social networks before people were suckered into believing they were a “good thing” and they couldn’t possibly live without them. They are not a good thing, though, because they are not being operated for your benefit, and if you think for one moment that they are, then you’re deluding yourselves.
Social networks exist for one reason, the creation of a revenue stream for the owners by selling off your information to advertisers. And there is no guarantee that some of those “advertisers”, are not government agencies, especially in the US where Homeland Security has its grubby fingers in oh so many pies, along with the FBI and no doubt other, more shadowy, agencies.
Anyway, if “they” want you, they’ll find you – using a pseudonym is no protection. A court order to your ISP and you’re screwed, and in the land of the free, at least, you’ll have Virginia farm boys kicking your door down before you can find your tin-foil hat! At home you might be shot by the Met one day, while boarding a train, or simply killed in the street, both tried and trusted tactics which apparently carry no consequences.
Have a nice day!
