Identity Crisis!

Sep 19, 2008 23:52

Uhhh...wow. I have made three entries this year including this one. To confess I nearly left this journal to rot for my own solution, nearly. But I guess it's back again.

Things have been a little different. For one, my persona has slowly shifted and changed into Rikev, a white furred fox. I am looking for art commissions and keeping my eye out to update my site. Talking of which I installed Mambo on it, nice bit of kit and I plan on adding more starting with game characters and personas and moving on to anything else interesting.

Sometimes I wonder, why would someone use a persona on the Internet? Isn't it supposed to be a place of free expression, if so, why do people hide behind strange names? I guess it is part of the free expression idea and can make one hell of a headache. I had different screen names for different parts of the Internet, typically themed towards the topic of the board of community I was involved in. Warhammer 40,000 communities had names themed towards things in the tabletop game, guild forums had the name of my in-game character and so on. Even on my very first trip on the Internet, I created dark_wulf as an Alias while waiting to be picked up in the college car park the day I received my broadband line. From the off, I was protecting my personal identity in cyberspace with an alias and following the warnings of not giving out personal details for everyone, everywhere.

But is it a necessity now rather then a choice to protect your identity online? It's difficult to tell, with the rise of sites such as MySpace and Facebook (and even LiveJournal itself) the amount of personal information posted on the Internet attracted media attention and a shitstorm was soon brewing. People had opened up on the Internet, their names, faces, interests, ripe for plucking by both Internet fraudsters and the advertising companies. Just browsing to my FaceBook page reveals my details being used to target advertisements at me mentioning my age, marital status and sexual orientation in a frankly creepy and invasive manner.

When you add in privacy controls being tightened on social networking sites and stories of people being fired for comments on blogs I think the Internet alias is here to stay. But it also shows the creativity of people on the Internet. I am part of a group of cyberspace users that comes up with some of the most imaginative and artistic aliases on the Internet and even a quick browse through any user contribution powered site always has names you have never seen before.

The only trouble is when do you have too many nicknames? I personally am moving to using only one, Rikev. But the static nature of some parts of the Internet make it harder. I can quickly change my MSN display name but changing my journal name is something I am reluctant to do as it means messing around with user accounts. The only other way would be to start afresh but that means losing contacts.

Well, big ramble over and spot the typos. At least it isn't a rant for once!

In other news, a very brief recap, I have taken an interest in motorcycles, speedway riding (not just watching, want to dooooooo!) and still as big a geek as I was before. Happy as I am though and still keeping my journal entries entirely off the cuff. I am thinking of moving to the last.fm journal though. Not sure yet, depends how many people I know I can find on it.
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