Sunday, January 01, 2012

The Personal Touch

(I was planning to leave this as a comment on the post linked above in the title, but comments appear to be closed -- or else my browser has decided not to show me the comment box.)

Even in the midst of a contretemps about anonymous/pseudonymous blogging, you can still see a shining example of the value of the personal touch (even if you don't really know who is doing the touching):
Blogger A outs the personal information of anonymous Blogger B: theoretically, this is a bad thing, but it's your job to watch your own back and that's just the cost of doing business, and who are we to say whether Blogger A is a bad person or has even done anything wrong.
Anonymous Blogger B gets the best of *me* in an argument over Twitter four years ago: Blogger B is an asshole.

(Now the part that's specific here.)
When I first started this I actually tried to keep everything separate: my online persona (here and on discussion boards), my playwriting persona (who is now officially declared dead after seven years of inactivity, I think), and my "real" life. Eventually, they all got merged together for the most part. I don't even remember ever watching any James Bond movie all the way through, so I can't say that has any influence. I think it was just my way of internally handling all the little "circles" that I ran in that basically have no other intersection: family, hometown, math, work, puzzles, mahjongg, etc; plus the idea that leading a double life was somehow "cool". (I actually still think this, for some reason.) I have these groups running wild on my Facebook, and they all seem to ignore each other just fine, so I guess there's no need for me to have a bunch of different names.

Program notes: I am now on Twitter, for good or for ill. The handle is <2*2*2*2*2*3> (i.e. my other gmail handle). Also, I am planning to run a puzzle contest, with prizes, for charity in February, and am posting this here because I really need a deadline in order to get everything finished I suspect.