#Real Names

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real problem with anonymity

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

According to "the greater internet fuckwad theory," the ills of the internet can be traced to anonymity:

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory

This isn't merely wrong, it's dangerously wrong. The idea that forcing people to identify themselves online will improve discourse is demonstrably untrue. Facebook famously adopted its "real names" policy because Mark Zuckerberg claimed to believe that "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity":

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

In service to this claimed belief, Zuckerberg kicked off the "nym wars," turning himself into the sole arbiter of what each person's true name was, with predictably tragicomic consequences:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Facebook is, famously, one of the internet's most polluted reservoirs of toxic interpersonal conduct. That's not despite the fact that people have to use their "real" names to participate there, but because of it. After all, the people who are most vulnerable to bullying and harassment are the ones who choose pseudonyms or anonymity so that they can speak freely. Forcing people to use their "real names" means that the most powerful bullies speak with impunity, and their victims are faced with the choice of retreat or being targeted offline.

This can be a matter of life and death. Cambodian dictator Hun Sen uses Facebook's real names policy to force dissidents to unmask themselves, which exposes them to arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. For members of the Cambodian diaspora, the choice is to unmask themselves or expose their family back home to retaliation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy

Some of the biggest internet fuckwads I've ever met – and I've met some big ones! – were utterly unashamed about using their real names. Some of the nicest people I know online have never told me their offline names. Greater internet fuckwad theory is just plain wrong.

But that doesn't mean that anonymity is totally harmless. There is a category of person who reliably uses a certain, specific kind of anonymity to do vicious things that inflicts serious harm on whole swathes of people: corporate bullies.

Take Tinyletter. Tinyletter is a beloved newsletter app that was created to help people who just wanted to talk to others, without a thought to going viral or getting rich. It was sold to Mailchimp, which was sold to Intuit, who killed it:

https://www.theverge.com/24085737/tinyletter-mailchimp-shut-down-email-newsletters

Tinyletter was a perfect little gem of a service. It cost almost nothing to run, and made an enormous number of peoples' lives better every day. Shutting it down was an act of corporate depravity by some faceless Intuit manager who woke up one day and said "Fuck all those people. Just fuck them."

No one knows who that person was. That person will never have to look those people in the eyes – those people whose lives were made poorer for that Intuit executive's indifference. That person is the greater fuckwad, and that fuckwaddery depends on their anonymity.

Or take @Pixsy, a corporate shakedown outfit that helps copyleft trolls trick people into making tiny errors in Creative Commons attributions and then intimidates them into handing over thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Copyleft trolling is an absolutely depraved practice, a petty grift practiced by greedy fuckwads who are completely indifferent to the harm they cause – even if it means bankrupting volunteer-run nonprofits for a buck:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

Pixsy claims that it is proud of its work "defending artists' rights," but when I named the personnel who signed their names to these profoundly unethical legal threats, Pixsy CEO Kain Jones threatened to sue me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

The expectation of corporate anonymity runs deep and the press is surprisingly complicit. I once spent weeks working on an investigative story about a multinational corporation's practices. I spent hours on the phone with the company's VP of communications, over the course of many calls. When we were done, they said, "Now, of course, you can't name me in the article. All of that has to be attributed to 'a spokesperson.'"

I was baffled. Nothing this person said was a secret. They weren't blowing the whistle. They weren't leaking secrets. They were a corporate official, telling me the official corporate line. But they wouldn't sign their name to it.

I wrote an article about for the Guardian. It was the only Guardian column any of my editors there ever rejected, in more than a decade of writing for them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/05/14/anodyne-anonymity/

Given the press's deference to this anodyne anonymity, it's no wonder that official spokespeople expect this kind of anonymity. I routinely receive emails from corporate spokespeople disputing my characterization of their employer's conduct, but insisting that I not attribute their dubious – and often blatantly false – statements to them by name.

These are the greater corporate fuckwads, who commit their sins from behind a veil of anonymity. That brand of bloodless viciousness, depravity and fraud absolutely depends on anonymity.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that "multiple identities" enabled bad behavior – as though it was somehow healthy for people to relate to their bosses, lovers, parents, toddlers and barbers in exactly the same way. Zuckerberg's motivation was utterly transparent: having "multiple identities" doesn't mean you "lack integrity" – it just makes it harder to target you for ads.

But Zuckerberg couldn't enshittify Facebook on his own. For that, he relies on a legion of anonymous Facebook managers. Some of these people undoubtably speak up for Facebook users' interests when their colleagues propose putting them in harm's way for the sake of some arbitrary KPI. But the ones who are making those mean little decisions? They absolutely rely on anonymity to do their dirty work.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/04/greater-corporate-fuckward-theory/#counterintuit-ive

[creature-wizard]

"But what's your real name? You know, the one your parents gave you, the one that's on your birth certificate!"

Uh-oh! Looks like somebody got societal conventions and governmental systems confused with Platonic reality again! Many such cases! Tsk tsk tsk!

[abybweisse]

Thanks to @kuroposting I got around to making this comment (keep reading that comment thread) on one of their posts.

So, yeah....

Elic Phantomhive

I have even more reason now to stick with this name for our earl, at least for now.

ciEL <- -> ELic

The "c" and "i" are properly mirrored, while the "el" is moved into the mirrored position but preserved in meaning. In that way, those names are anagrams but also "mirrors" of each other, without needing to spell it Leic (which would work with Irish roots -- see links further down as examples -- but would remove the "El" aspect).

Even though Ciel is thought of as a French name, with Latin origins... it works well with Hebrew, just like Rachel is Hebrew in origin. We've previously been explaining "Ciel" in terms of "sky blue, sky, heaven", but WHY would this be a word for Heaven, and not just sky? Because of "el". Is it literally the "ci" of "El"?

I found meanings for Ciel that define it as "a divine blessing from heaven".

But I wanted to find something specifically connecting Ciel to Hebrew, and I found this: just as Ciel, cieling, ceiling, celing, ceal, cael, coel -- and all those other variations in Old English, French, and Latin -- speak of coverings, concealing something, such important words used in architecture and interior design (and biology)... these are also used for translations of the Hebrew Bible when speaking of covering things, specifically when it's not just to protect but also to hide from God's sight. There was also mention of a Hebrew word that can be translated as sailor:

And שָׂחִיף can be translated as wainscoting or thin paneling, but is also slang for thin, as in "skinny". Thin barriers used to protect but also hide... and then a reference to sailors?

Uh. Are sea and ci the same thing? Like... the Genesis account of dividing "the waters" above and below? So the sea/ci is the water below, while Ciel is the waters above?

Ciel is the "sea of god"... the sky protecting/covering Earth and hiding Heaven from human view. It's "heaven" in the sense that it's the closest anyone on the earthly plane can "see" of Heaven.

Let's not forget I'd explained (in numerous posts and comments, like big time here, slightly here, and here) that Elic is a variant of Alex, meaning "protection/protector" (also commented here), and Ciel also means protection, in the form of covering or hiding.

Mother3 theory hasn't let me down yet. Why would the mirror twins' naming scheme be any different?

Now back to Layla and Al/Alyal in Arabic... the dark cover of night.... heh 😏

[sithvampiremaster27]

Saw this on the Disney TVA News page a few weeks ago: the Primos Family Tree

Now we know what the Primos' real names are (including Tater's)

Deep down, I knew those were just nicknames.

I mean, no parent would be cruel enough to name their daughter after a potato, or give their son names like "Big Nacho" or "Scooter"... would they?

Also... Lucita's real name is Luz... and her sister: Lita is voiced by the same actress, who previously voiced Camila Noceda...

Owl House connection, much?

[daisyg14]

This is kinda random, but I love calling characters by their real names, rather than what they were called in season one. For example, most people just call Old Man McGucket, McGucket, but to me, he will always be Fiddleford. And, Miss Heinous will always be Meteora, no matter what form she's in. Something about it just feels so much better than calling them what they were originally known as.

Shout out to old sillies who slowly regained their memories, gotta be one of my favorite genders 🙃

[mananabuffins]

People love to obsess about trans people's "real names" but my oldest and cissest brother has gone by a preferred name since he was a toddler and no one cared. (He and my dad have the same first name. He goes by his middle name to avoid confusion.)

So. Y'know. Just a reminder that that argument is bullshit and people only use it because they need ammunition, not because anyone cares about rEaL names.

[gennsoup]

One must name cats, people, whoever comes close, even though they carry their real names hidden inside them.

Keri Hulme, The Bone People

[tamarahtalkstv]

If I Make A Doujinshi Should I Use My Real Name Or A Pen Name?

[cephalodo]

Look, people will try to say it's a tumblr-ass naming convention, but the real Yapswill Feentussi in the room know it's a Douglas Adams-ass naming convention.

these posts have the same vibes imo 💯

[a-wizard]

What do you mean you can’t find a job? Have you looked on Indeed? What about Linkedin? You should try Upwork. How about Rise? Have you tried Jobera? Take a look on Dribbble. You GOTTA be on Jooble, dude. Get on Jooble. Jooble has it for you.

[podcastprincess]

BRITS React to Celebrities and Their Real Names You'll Never Believe

[potat0bag]

every tight knit friend group got the: - always at 1HP - never has inventory space - refuses to wear armour

[ghostowlattic]

Sunday Fucky Liberia, Census, 2008

[duskmite]

anyone else, regardless of the billie piper of it all, really fucking upset that ncuti gatwa isn't the doctor anymore

he was SUCH a good one. SO good. we had nowhere NEAR enough time with him with two short ass series.

[nyehhehhehs]

cool leg activities