Realism

[rivkat]

I’m interested in the “people who can verify I’m real” meme I’ve seen going around, connected to the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax. I’m trying to sort out my thoughts about it, because in many fannish cases I’m not sure why it’s relevant. I mean, if you’re performing “this is what an X looks like” online, then your “real”/offline identity or performance is likely to be relevant, and more so if you’re asking people to act or change beliefs based on your online performance. If you’re inserting yourself into a political movement and getting real activists involved in trying to help you, then yes, it’s relevant. If you’re asking for money, then yes, it’s relevant. If you’re asking people to meet you offline, then yes, it’s relevant. But a lot of people I read mostly post fannish stuff with occasional personal or even political content—and then I’m not sure how much offline identity means, especially when what you’re performing online is a privileged or locally privileged identity, like cis white American woman. Suppose I don’t have a partner or kids (to whom I occasionally refer)—does that change what my book reviews or stories mean? I kind of hope they speak for themselves (and I am certain that they reveal a lot more about who I am and/or who I think I am than I intend).

Flipping it around, would it matter to me if fans I think of as women were actually men? Would it matter to me if fans I think of as having kids/being pregnant didn’t or weren’t? In a lot of cases, probably not, if all they’re doing is performing a life. Then again, if I found out someone who performed being Jewish wasn’t—kind of like the sister in The Prince of Tides--that would skeeve me out.  There's something here about "always punch up," but I'm not sure how to get at it.

Anyway, solipsistically I assert that I am as real as these words.

Comments

[lotesse]

This is a really interesting point! - and I wonder if the meme's not in some way connected to the shift in internet identity politics over the last, idk, five years? Pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, I knew almost no one who ever used their legal name online, but now! Using a legal name carries a certain cachet nowadays. And fandom's this holdout space of anonymity that keeps having to push back against "real life" social networking "features" like the short-lived geographic location markers on lj.

[fanaddict]

Fandom may be the hold out for a reason. Let's hop on the way back machine... I was a really active member of the Sentinel fandom under my real name (using my grad school email - dear G*d was I naive) and so were many people (this was back in the dinosaur age of email lists). Over the years, I've seen most people in fandom drift into pseudonym use, certainly I did the first time I was having a suddenly contentious discussion with someone for no reason I understood and then I was privately warned she was the type who got offended easily and then "outed" people's fannish lives. I have absolutely no shame is liking fannish things, slash included, but it's not a discussion I want with, say, my mother-in-law...

Personally, I think even using your real name on non-fannish activity is risky because employers search for stuff like that these days and so many people have stuff google-able that wouldn't be good for potential employers to see.

I also think, to go back to the original post, that to me it's the ideas that should stand out, not the Big Name espousing the ideas. I intentionally "divorced" my previous RL identity despite at that time - 15 years ago, ack! - having a positive rep and being relatively well-known. My ideas should stand or fall on their own merits.

On the other hand, it can feel like betrayal if relationships go beyond fannish interaction and some significant detail is omitted/changed (obviously doing some sort of social experiment like the "Syrian Gay Girl" is appalling at all times). A friend was very emotionally invested with a guy online only to learn it was a woman pretending, who got in too deep emotionally and couldn't figure out how to get out. So certainly our responsibility as people not to harm others shouldn't be excised along with our RL names.

Anyway, Cogito ergo sum, or to paraphrase Descarte: I think, therefore I am. My ideas are proof enough of my existence I hope.

[rivkat]

Yes--I too used my real name very early on in listserv culture, whoops. And there are a lot of fine distinctions: pure pseud, or pseud plus very minimal info (I am female, I am American, etc.) I think can stand on its own, but then there's the risk that the interaction will change over time. It can be harmless to pretend a different identity (though I don't think it was ever harmless with Gay Girl in Damascus), but then what if you get involved with someone? That's a problem.