Feelin' all reflective

[jenneany]

I can't believe I'm posting so much today. Most of my online fandom life has been all about the lurking. I guess because my life has been turned upside-down lately, I've been going through some weird changes. One of them, apparantly, is the need to comment on things I'm usually pretty quiet about. And I think that's a good thing. I've even been

Comments

[pensnest]

Hi - I can't actually remember how it is I came to friend you, and whether you'll therefore recognise me or not, but here I am, so...

I'm... not sure that I agree with you. In fact, no, I don't agree. Yes, we see an awful lot of on-line rudeness, but I'm willing to bet that the worst offenders are the kind of people who'd shout "Show us yer tits" across the street if they felt like it, so they're just being consistently foul. Yes, there are people who'll drop in to someone's LJ and leave an anonymous comment that's basically an offensive personal insult-but I'm going to assume that if someone thinks it's okay to do that in writing, they'd think it okay to hiss at someone in the street, too. The vast majority of commenters will comment with their username attached, and hold themselves to a higher standard than hiss-and-run.

The thing is, I don't believe that knowing people through the internet is 'only'. There are people I care about quite a lot whom I 'only' know through what they've posted in their LJ (or DW). What someone posts in their LJ (or DW) is a sort of distilled version of who that person *is*. I have been lucky enough to meet quite a few people from my friends list, but there are some I'll never get to know in person-but I know them from what they've written down and shared. I do have actual relationships with them! Of course I don't have that level of relationship with everyone on my friends lists, or every author to whom I've sent feedback, etc, but I don't have that level of relationship with every one of my in-the-flesh acquaintances either.

As for our online names being 'relative anonymity', again, I don't think I can agree. We build up a reputation with our online identities just as we do offline-probably more so, indeed, since our words are all anyone has to judge us with. (Well, possibly our userpics too?) I remember during RaceFail '09 that a part of the row involved people on the Theresa Nielsen Hayden side of the fence complaining about those of us who do not automatically use our 'real names' online. And I thought then, and I still think, that they are being silly. I could call myself Penelope Jones, or Eve Robinson, or Sarah Whitlock, and be accepted as a 'real person' even though none of those is my actual name. But if you Google 'pensnest', the only one I know of on the internet is Me-and if you want to know who I *am*, you can read my LiveJournal and find out.

So my personal reputation is tied up with my user name, something that is true of a very large number of fans, most of whom have had the same user name for *years*. Is it possible that as you have spent most of your online fandom life lurking, you haven't yet established yourself as jenneany and it feels, so far, like an identity you put on, rather than *you*? I promise you, being pensnest does not feel like anonymity to me. (And when we first met, one of my LJ friends told me that I sound *exactly* like my LJ.)

[jenneany]

Hi! I definately know who you are though I don't remember exactly when I friended you, either. Anyways, thanks for responding to my post - I think your assertions are totally valid. I tend to look really closely at one facet of a subject and get caught up in it, only to later see a completely different side. And while I do think there is SOME level of anonymity for SOME people, especially those who usually lurk, you are right that strong relationships do exist and evolve through on-line connections. And I guess there are some people whose user names come and go, but many people have built a strong representation through their user identity, however distilled it may be. It would be wrong to assume that EVERYONE feels removed in an on-line context. Anyways, I like what you said and thanks for giving me something to chew on (I'm very into thinky-thoughts and introspection these days).

[pensnest]

Do you read metafandom? I recommend it if you're into the thinky-thoughts! In fact, if you are reading on the current SPN situation-I think you are?-you'd probably find a lot of what went on during last year's RaceFail very helpful and interesting reading. It can be a bit hazardous going into a debate like this if you haven't seen anything of previous discussions-so many things are clarified for a lot of the participants during the discussion, and someone who comes in later on and hasn't had that experience can say the wrong thing very easily and end up rather bruised. Personally, I prefer to learn from other people's mistakes!

[jenneany]

Cool, thanks for the link! I agree, it's better to learn from other poeple's past mistakes and spare myself some pain!

*runs off to check it out*