laceblade | This post has no actual value because I'm using a pseudonym!

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This post has no actual value because I'm using a pseudonym!

And for the record, I do have a social life. Reading LJ posts really doesn't take very much time. I like being informed, and I like deconstructing this stuff in my free time.

Relevant Posts that give a background to the one I'm about to write!

coffeeandink: RaceFail: Once More, with Misdirection

vom_marlowe: Fucking Will Shetterly Insults Me and My Family

deepad: To burn a bridge is sometimes as necessary as to build one

shewhohashope: Cultural Appropriation and SF/F: Once More, With Apathy

coffeeandink: Dear People....

I am really confused by posts like Kathryn Cramer's, which cries foul at people who use aliases online.*

I'm sorry, but some people have very good reasons for choosing to be anonymous on the Internet. Not everybody is self-employed, or even employed by leftist, free-thinking people who agree with all of their opinions anyway.

Does nobody remember the PDF files from WhiteHouse.gov that were floating around just about a month ago? To be considered for employment in the Obama Administration, a person had to detail any blog posts or blog comments, or comments of any sort, made online in their entire life.

People who work in the same field as me are actually forbidden by their employers from having blogs at all, because anything - and they do mean anything - can misinterpreted and reflect poorly on their employer. People who have blogs are not hired. So if you choose to have a blog anyway, you'd damned well better use a pseudonym.

People like me are not using aliases to hide behind a made-up name, to never own up to the things we say, to never take responsibility for hurting others, for making a point, for speaking out. In fact, many of us make use of aliases so that we might have a voice at all. I'll own up to things I write online. I'm not going anywhere! I don't start conversations and then run away, taunting with "HAHA BUT YOU DON'T KNOW MY REAL NAME!"

In fact, I think using a pseudonym keeps the conversation focused on what's being said, and not on who people are.

I thought

jonquil solved this shit with her post calling attention to all the bad-ass people who have used pseudonyms like, say, Publius.

vom_marlowe points out why it's quite dickish to make assumptions about people's class after finding out single bits of information about them. I don't really don't know what Will Shetterly's deal is. Like, you find out one detail about a person, and then you know their entire life story!

Even if he was right....what if people are middle class, or *gasp*, upper class? Does it take away their right to call you a fucker for being a dick on the Internet? No! It does not.

And I'm getting really sick of all of his friend's comments of "OMG, but he really is nice in person! I can't believe he's this mean online."

For the record, dear friends of mine, if any one of you were to start being a total asshole to all of my friends online, but you were still nice to me in person, I would not be friends with you any more! The way you treat other people also reflects on you as a person. The Internet is real. People who type words are not machines or paper dolls; I find it ironic that in this RaceFail 9000, the people using their real names are often the ones who don't seem to understand that. IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

To bring up high school as an example most people understand: even when Abercrombie-wearing "popular" kids were nice to me, if they were mean to me or people they viewed as ugly or fat in my grade, I was not nice to them in return! That shit is mean. Nothing excuses it. I didn't stop thinking that they were assholes when they were nice to me, or when, at that moment, they weren't picking on other kids.

Lastly...can someone tell me who Theresa Neilsen Hayden is? Same with her husband? I'd never heard of these people before RaceFail 9000, and they must be big in fandom or something, but all I know is that they acted with fail.

Upcoming/Uplifting:
-Tonight's

beer_marmalade discussion, at which we discussed topics and thoughts from RaceFail 9000. It was a good conversation! Even with a mostly white crowd! GOOD THINGS CAN COME OUT OF MIRES OF CRAP.

*Link removed because Kathryn Cramer keeps changing the redirection of the URL, sending people to scammer sites that might have malware. Mark a bitch point in her column!

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The Nielsen Haydens, in addition to being longtime fans, are editors for Tor. Someone with more intimate knowledge will no doubt come along and be more precise about "editors for Tor."

IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

AMEN.

Plus, yeah, that amen thing.

Well, what failure on their parts! Do they go to Wiscon?

Amen, Amen, AMEN-AAAAAAAMEN.

They have been at WisCon in the past, though I don't know if it's a regular con for them or not.

Who are the Nielsen Haydens? Fanzine fans who have helped run cons, including worldcons (e.g., Iguanacon), and ended up working in the industry.

Patrick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Nielsen_Hayden) is now the big editor-person at Tor, which means he pretty much has more clout than anyone in SF publishing ATM. (Or that's my take on it; WD may have a better explanation.)

Teresa (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Teresa_Nielsen_Hayden) has worked in other genres but still within the publishing industry. For a while, she was editing romance novels. Now she moderates discussions over at BoingBoing. Her book on copy editing, Making Book, is the only work-related book that ever produced a fanzine-like reaction (I wanted to write a letter of comment, which is "the usual" response to a fanzine).

I have had little direct contact with Patrick; I once went to dinner in a group that included Teresa (at Corflu, one of the oldfartfanzinefan cons). I've seen them both on panels at conventions such as Minicon, Fourth Street Fantasy, and Corflu. They both seemed fairly sane to me (with blind spots, just like the rest of us) until recently. They both know a lot about the history of fandom and the history of publishing (SF and mainstream).

They were also involved in the "TAFF Wars," another occasion when All Fandom Was Plunged Into War (cf. Chapter 12 for a reference (http://taff.org.uk/reports/rhott_c.html)). This conflict occurred in fanzines (like LiveJournal, only slower and through the mails) when the TAFF administrator's lover won the next year's race. (Those two are still married to each other and cohabiting happily, thank you.)

Um, there's probably more, but that's what I've got right now.

Edited 2009-03-03 05:24 (UTC)

Thank you very much!

I've heard of the blog Making Light, but have never actually read it. BWAHAHA.

Argh. Why do white people have to keep adding insult to injury?

And a lot of the people doing so are a couple orbits away from my social circle here in the Twin Cities. It's getting really frustrating.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a former editor with Tor, one of the biggest SF/F publishers. She is very prominent in a lot of areas of fandom. She is currently a moderator of BoingBoing.net's comments threads and co-writes the Making Light blog with her husband and a few other people. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is still an editor with Tor, and equally prominent in a lot of areas of fandom. As such, they have a lot of power in the SF/F publishing industry.

I don't know! It's some weird impulse-thing!

Thank you! This puts things in perspective for me. Perhaps I should check out the Making Light blog?

I don't even know what BoingBoing.net is, although I've heard of that, too. I fail at the Internet, apparently.

I find Making Light tends a little too much towards echo chamber for my general preferences. (I'm being very precise here; it isn't actually an echo chamber, but there are hints around the edges.) BoingBoing is mostly just interesting links about topics the four (or is it five?) posters are interested in. I'm interested in some of the same topics, so I read it. But if their interests aren't yours, it's entirely skippable. TNH moderates their comments, which makes occasional problems for me.

IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

THAAAAANK YOU. I swear to God, I will never understand why people fail to understand this. "The Internet" is not a magical fairy-land of no ethics and no consequences. It is a communication medium. If a friend of mine was perfectly nice in face-to-face interactions but instantly became a screaming racist ass on the telephone, guess what? I would not trivialize that as "Telephone Dickhead Syndrome" and continue being friends with him! What the fuck!

EXACTLY, with the phone thing!! I don't know what makes the Internet so special, but with any other form of technology, nobody would be so ridiculous about it!

If you don't mind my asking, how do you find entries via Pingback? I'm cool with Pingback happening, but I just want to know how to find things through it (like, say, if people are linking to me!).

(here via links)

For the record, dear friends of mine, if any one of you were to start being a total asshole to all of my friends online, but you were still nice to me in person, I would not be friends with you any more! The way you treat other people also reflects on you as a person. The Internet is real. People who type words are not machines or paper dolls; I find it ironic that in this RaceFail 9000, the people using their real names are often the ones who don't seem to understand that. IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

THIS, YES, THANK YOU. I cannot stand the "He's a dear friend and colleague, and his frothing online is totally unrelated to how he is offline, and I vouch for him offline so you can't criticize him online" crap. It really drives me nuts.

I KNOW, it is so heinous. :( I can understand being defensive about a friend initially, but it's been what, two months now? Frickin' A!

The Kathryn Cramer link is dead.

Yeah, color me not surprised.

For people who get so bitchy about others using pseudonyms on the Internet, you'd think they wouldn't go about deleting their journals or their posts what caused such wank, BUT IF YOU THOUGHT THAT, YOU WOULD BE WRONG!

Yeah, I disagree that the notion of internet anonymity means not taking responsibility for your ideas. You're taking responsibility WITH your internet identity - you're not less accountable, somehow. You're more likely to be honest and forthright if you're feeling safe. I feel like those people don't understand Internet culture. Knowing who some of the RaceFail authors are IRL doesn't do a single thing to change how I feel about them, and it doesn't devalue their arguments.

And I, too, take internet interactions just as seriously as face-to-face interactions. I stand by what I say here, and expect others to do the same.

Edited 2009-03-03 13:30 (UTC)

Exactly!

anonymity:
one more reason is, some people are at higher risk for being stalked. For example, having worked in a (high security) mental hospital, I have to work really hard to keep that persona separate from anything I do publicly online.

Likewise, if I was go to by my real name, and then talk about my schools, someone could theoretically use that to track down my students. And that would be a bad (and illegal!) thing.

Yeah! Even people with low risk of being stalked can have creepy stalker-esque ex-boyfriends/girlfriends.

There are SO MANY reasons to want to be anonymous on the Internet. In fact, I think it's pretty awesome that it's so easy to BE anonymous. There are tons of people on my friendslist, where the only thing I know about them is: "That person is a PoC living in the western USA." And that is literally all of the personal details at my disposal - but it's also just about all I need!

You know, I think there's a difference between anonymity and pseudonymity, and that difference is really important here. People who blog under pseudonyms are still responsible to what they say under that name, can still get banned, get piled on, corrected, make and accept apologies, converse, build reputations, etc. etc under that invented name. I very much doubt that

coffeeandink has gone around making inflammatory, completely anonymous comments of any kind--she blogs from her pseudonym, her comments are traceable to that name, and she works hard to maintain links to her opponents' arguments and keep a transparent blog. I find that all very ethical.

I don't see how whatever happened however-many years ago at her old job is a) any of Kathryn Cramer's business or, more importantly, b) at all relevant to the discussion at hand. What is germane is the work and words she has built under her pseudonym! We're all entitled to privacy, and violation of privacy is unacceptable.

One of the reasons I like using my real name online is that it reminds me that this is real life too with real consequences for acting like a douchebag. Not that everyone can or should use their real name online by any means, but I do find it helpful personally in not making that false distinction between offline and online behavior.

You'd think that all these people whining about how evil pseudonyms are would have noticed that acting like a creep under your own name (or, well, any name you use for a period of time really) comes back to bite you in the ass later.

The Internet is real. People who type words are not machines or paper dolls;

You have no idea how brilliant it is to finally hear someone say that in any place other than one dedicated to that topic. ... if that sentence makes any sense.

Thank you.

For the record, dear friends of mine, if any one of you were to start being a total asshole to all of my friends online, but you were still nice to me in person, I would not be friends with you any more! The way you treat other people also reflects on you as a person. The Internet is real. People who type words are not machines or paper dolls; I find it ironic that in this RaceFail 9000, the people using their real names are often the ones who don't seem to understand that. IF YOU ARE A DICK ONLINE, YOU ARE STILL BEING A DICK.

That's just sense-making! The whole adding of "omg but s/he's really nice" caveat seems to be in the handbook on how to be friends with an asshole.

What I cannot understand is how Cramer, a science fiction author, can not know just how many women (and men) in the field before her and even now, used and use a pseudonym.

She makes it sound like anyone using an alias is a criminal. Apparently Andre Norton was just a coward instead of a trailblazer in the field. There are hundreds of writers, musicians and artists using (or have used) a different name.

I had more to say but her intentional redirect has me so mad I can't form coherent thought. It has to be illegal to willfully attempt to damage someone else's property.

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This post has no actual value because I'm using a pseudonym!

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