Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
Do everyone a favor, will you? Go on the World of Warcraft forums for a week. Under a girl's name.
Be a girl for a week. That's it. Seven days. You can afford to take that much vacation from being Mark Zuckerberg.
And then you may try to tell me we don't need pseudonyms on the internet.
You will never - ever - reach a full understanding of the life of someone who has to put up with this kind of shit every day. But you will get an inkling of the vast gap in your current awareness of human society on this earth.
Try it. Try being a girl for a week. Or if that's too threatening to your privileged psyche, try a Chinese name on for size. Try being anyone other than the white boy from Harvard that you are, and see how much of an issue your "identity" suddenly becomes to other people. See how badly it interferes with what you're trying to do, and who you actually are. See how inconvenient and yes, inefficient, using your real name can be if that real name is feminine or nonwhite.
Go on, try it. It's the internet - no one will know. At least, not until you have your way.
I read the Time feature, and frankly your vision of the future is revolting. An internet without strangers. Go on Amazon, and see only your Friends' reviews. Read webforums, and see only your Friends' posts. Stay within the same group of people, no matter where you go. Holy christ. If I had grown up reading only the books the people around me read, watching the movies the people around me watched, spammed entirely with the advertising Liked by my peer-pressure-mandated Friends?
I might have taken years to come out of the closet. I might have taken years to leave my hometown. I would never have gone to Sweden, I certainly wouldn't have gone to Tasmania. I might not even have made it to Japan. How long would it have taken, in your vision of the future, for me to find a gay adult who made it out okay? There wasn't one there in my existing social network. I had to get on the internet, and talk to strangers.
You're not pitching something new. You're giving us something we've already outgrown. You think everyone wants to have the same old people, the same old closed networks, everywhere, with us, forever.
Because it's all a very good deal for you and those like you, born into privilege, grown into power, surrounded forever by other Exeter boys who like what you like and do what you do. But for those of us who would like to move up a little, maybe change the class structure that you're so far into you don't even see, or maybe just those of us who want to go somewhere different and meet someone new, the internet is our best tool. You would take that away, and not even realize you were doing it.
Because of course you could go anywhere and meet anyone, with your passport and your skin and your name, and not feel the slightest danger or threat. So why can't we? I hear you cry. Why can't we use our real names for everything, online and off?
So I'm daring you. Be a girl for a week. Find out.
With all my heartfelt and pseudonymous contempt,
Lina D.
Be a girl for a week. That's it. Seven days. You can afford to take that much vacation from being Mark Zuckerberg.
And then you may try to tell me we don't need pseudonyms on the internet.
You will never - ever - reach a full understanding of the life of someone who has to put up with this kind of shit every day. But you will get an inkling of the vast gap in your current awareness of human society on this earth.
Try it. Try being a girl for a week. Or if that's too threatening to your privileged psyche, try a Chinese name on for size. Try being anyone other than the white boy from Harvard that you are, and see how much of an issue your "identity" suddenly becomes to other people. See how badly it interferes with what you're trying to do, and who you actually are. See how inconvenient and yes, inefficient, using your real name can be if that real name is feminine or nonwhite.
Go on, try it. It's the internet - no one will know. At least, not until you have your way.
I read the Time feature, and frankly your vision of the future is revolting. An internet without strangers. Go on Amazon, and see only your Friends' reviews. Read webforums, and see only your Friends' posts. Stay within the same group of people, no matter where you go. Holy christ. If I had grown up reading only the books the people around me read, watching the movies the people around me watched, spammed entirely with the advertising Liked by my peer-pressure-mandated Friends?
I might have taken years to come out of the closet. I might have taken years to leave my hometown. I would never have gone to Sweden, I certainly wouldn't have gone to Tasmania. I might not even have made it to Japan. How long would it have taken, in your vision of the future, for me to find a gay adult who made it out okay? There wasn't one there in my existing social network. I had to get on the internet, and talk to strangers.
You're not pitching something new. You're giving us something we've already outgrown. You think everyone wants to have the same old people, the same old closed networks, everywhere, with us, forever.
Because it's all a very good deal for you and those like you, born into privilege, grown into power, surrounded forever by other Exeter boys who like what you like and do what you do. But for those of us who would like to move up a little, maybe change the class structure that you're so far into you don't even see, or maybe just those of us who want to go somewhere different and meet someone new, the internet is our best tool. You would take that away, and not even realize you were doing it.
Because of course you could go anywhere and meet anyone, with your passport and your skin and your name, and not feel the slightest danger or threat. So why can't we? I hear you cry. Why can't we use our real names for everything, online and off?
So I'm daring you. Be a girl for a week. Find out.
With all my heartfelt and pseudonymous contempt,
Lina D.