Multiple Identities Get Confusing! - Blaugust Day 4
I was scanning down my friends list on Facebook today when it suddenly hit me that I don't actually know who half of those people are! If you've been involved with the Internet for any length of time, you probably have multiple identities and multiple groups of people that you've interacted with over time but do you know people by their real names or their online community name?I first got access to the internet in 1998 and as we sat there on that first evening, we didn't actually know quite what to do with it! It was full 56k dial-up too so everything took forever but I found Ask Jeeves I think it was, and typed in Genealogy. That opened up a year or more of intense research and was my first online identity. If you follow any of my photography stuff, you may have seen Gala98 pop up. I kept that handle for a long while and when I started in microstock in 2005, I continued to use it.
So my microstock friends on FB know me as Gala98. Then I became involved with Etsy and needed a clever name for my photography shop there. I also intended selling various other stuff so it became Arty Allsorts and I still have friends who call me Arty! That was also my first introduction to blogging, Twitter, Flickr and various other networking sites.
Then I got stuck into World of Warcraft which brought me two new identities, basically because I was blogging about gold making and didn't want people to link my WoW character name with my gold making blog Auction House Addict. You guys reading this know me as Nev who was actually my banker for a while but I regularly delete my bankers to throw off any competitors who have 'found me out'. I chose Nev for my 'new' gaming Twitter account and it has kind of stuck!
Inside WoW, I'm Lyss to my friends and guildies even when I'm playing my other alts. There's also a few variations of Lyss & Nev around in other games I've tried. Nev is usually taken or too short so it becomes NevToo and most recently, I've put the two together to become Nev Lyssana in Skyforge! Feel free to add me if you're playing by the way.
So back to my Facebook friends list - the most confusing ones are the Etsy ladies - we all called each other by our shop names so now, 5 years later when I haven't been around Etsy so much, I've forgotten who's who. They've also changed their avatar pictures too and many have gone on to their own sites, started creating other stuff or just stopped the Etsy thing all together so effectively, I have a bunch of strangers on my timeline!
It's not so hard with guildies but some Twitter/WoW friends I've added are confusing too. I never used to have this problem so maybe I'm just getting old or my identities are multiplying too fast! So if I call you Jack and your name is John - be pleased that at least I got the first letter right ok? lol
How many identities do you have online? How do you keep them straight in your head?
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Yeah, my Facebook is limited almost entirely to family and coworkers I no longer work with. I know I am not using it right, but I don't want a bunch of random strangers following me where I am more likely to post personal things for close family/friends to see.
ReplyDeletedon't forget you can put your 'friends' into groups if you want to and just publish to that group. None of my family are on FB so I don't have that problem really!
DeleteI only really have 2 online identities, and even that gets confusing. I always went by Jasyla, my WoW moniker and the name I tend to use in any video game I can name my character. So all my Xbox, Steam, etc. accounts are under the name Jasyla. Recently I've been trying to move away from that so on Twitter and YouTube I go by Pam. But at the same time, I have a rather unique last name so I try not to share that with people I don't know well or add anyone but people I've been talking to for years or met in real life to things like Facebook. This creates confusion with which email I use to do things like comment on blogs. On some I use my blog email and some I use my real email (which is my full name).
ReplyDeleteThe battle.net client is something I get confused by. So many people use names they don't currently use on Twitter (or their real names) so I don't actually know who a lot of my battle.net friends are at this point.
oh heck! I'd forgotten about the battle.net thing - that gets me too!
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