Aliases are hard, perhaps impossible, on the modern Web

This place looks really nice. There's a bit of dust in some corners, some splinted wood here, some discoloration there. I really like it, gives the pub a really nice charm.

I was unsure on what to say for a while until I realized that the best way is to probably just do it. Obviously, I'm also going to start with a heavy one; what could go wrong? ;)

As I said in my presentation, this is my first "real" alias that isn't publicly traceable back to my real person. Ever since I made it, I couldn't stop to think about it. Everybody discusses compartmentalization but nobody discusses the real dynamics of such a thing.

I feel like people don't choose many different aliases anymore not only due to cultural influences but also because, in practice, you really can't do that anymore on the modern Web.

Let's start with an observation: you can't change your alias if you don't want to lose your friends; If you change identity, how can they recognize you? They must know your new alias, building a chain, piece by piece. Back then, when the web was this big group of islands, this wasn't an issue; you would never have all of your friends in the same places, I imagine. But now, as the Web is mainly formed by these huge lands, how can you keep your identity split?

Let me elaborate. Let's say I have a bunch of friends which all know each other. One is on Discord and Steam, the other uses Steam and Reddit and another one instead uses everything already mentioned and something else too. Supposing I used a different alias for each platform, it doesn't take much to make all my aliases known, potentially publicly if I start "crosslinking" stuff out of necessity, which nowadays platforms like Discord also encourage at the profile level.

Instead of making a chain, you made a "web" of aliases. You've just diluted the problem, not fixed it.

Over time, with my main alias, despite many changes, I have noticed that I can't break that chain: I have a presence, an identity and, perhaps most importantly, friends. All of a sudden, I find myself stuck.

That's why, despite being so techy and privacy-conscious for all these years, I just got my first new alias here. The new Web and its big "agglomeration" of services has had this huge side effect that I've never seen anybody discuss (or at least not explicitly). It became a feedback loop, reinforcing certain habits, headed who knows where.

I never realized this before and now I'm very curious to know if someone else here has had similar experiences, since I never heard of this phenomenon explicitly before.

~bartender, I think I'll need an espresso after this please. A short one, no sugar, thanks.

detritus

Hi ~shoebx!

I am also taking a sort of "permanent" alias for the first time in the smolweb. In the past I would either use anonymous sites, or I would use random words as aliases, for example on IRC, where I would ensure anonymity that way. Every now and then I would keep an alias for a few days while I kept an ongoing conversation.

I also used Discord for a while, where I also kept a single alias and more or less became part of a community for a while. But I am not a very discord kind of person. I like sites like this where the conversation can take place at a more leisurely pace and I don't have to be there the whole time, I can take my time to reply, and I can make longer replies. That's how I do.

So for the first time in a long while I decided to establish an alias to develop a voice for self expression, in smol.pub. It has been kind of hard, because I try to make up a persona and keep some sort of consistency in my writings. On the other hand, that part of me that unfolds when writing on the internet tends to be rather... cynical, and I am not sure if I want to come off all the time as a sort of jaded pessimist. It is hard for me to keep a balance of the qualities I like in an online persona that I try to builds, after all, an alias is a character that one assumes for the purpose of social communication.

Bun in general, I am most fond of anonymous media, I like small sites where, even though everybody remains anonymous, one can always identify the underlying presence of a handful of recurring people, so there is an ongoing conversation where voices get mixed in an undifferentiated homogeneous mass, and yet manage to emerge a sort of overall personality and tone.

Such are the wonders of the internet. I am just happy to be as far away as possible from the big busy hubs of mostly worthless compulsive activity.

shoebx

Hi ~detritus, that's very interesting! I think we had similar, yet almost opposite experiences. I had a "big" public alias for most of the time, and you the opposite; it's really nice seeing this point of view!

Anonymous media sounds nice indeed, although I'm not sure how much I could "live" only with them; I think I'd "solidify" at least a few of them and build a "big" alias soon, I tend to attach quite easily to people.

I guess that's my biggest concern: how do you handle emotions when, in a way, nobody knows you (and in the case of anonymous media, you know nobody)? I think I'd get attached to somebody, become friend with them and see them disappear eventually without notice. That'd hurt quite a bit if it were my only way of interacting with people, I think.

I'm really curious for more details on this kind of experience.

detritus

I think I'd get attached to somebody, become friend with them and see them disappear eventually without notice. That'd hurt quite a bit if it were my only way of interacting with people, I think.

You are right about that, it has happened to me quite a few times already. I used to join an irc channel where I started making friendships, but one by one they started fading. Actually I think it was me who disappeared for a while, as I started doing other things in life, I moved to a new city, and I couldn't stay in touch. When I got back, the little community wasn't there anymore.

I have had similar experiences many times, sometimes I'd make a friend on a platform I wouldn't keep using, and eventually I would leave that platform and lose that friend. Some other time a girl I was getting along with straight up ghosted me in discord, I am not sure why....

It's sad, but eventually one starts to understand the fleeting nature of online friendships. I have never been too attached to people, honestly. Not that I don't appreciate them, it's just that life is in constant flux. Some of the friends I've made in the past (mostly IRL friends), I don't get along with them anymore, and some of them, even though I still care about them, I can see that we are starting to take different paths, and develop different ideas which make for a big gap in communication between us.

Here in the midnight pub, I am starting to get along with some of the people here, but I know it's not going to last forever, and they or me might disappear at some point, because on each our side of the screen things happen and we do not know each other beyond this platform so we might not even know what happened to the other person.

I like to appreciate the present time, knowing too well that in the future neither of us may still be around...

Kind of a sad note to end this, but I don't think it's actually that sad, as I said, such are the wonders of this unique medium of communication.

shoebx

Hi ~detritus, it's been a while! I got quite busy, otherwise I would've answered a bit earlier :P

~bartender, how about some fruit juice this time? Any kind will do, thanks!

Yeah, you're right, the majority of online relationships are temporary, just as with life. I did manage to keep a bunch of virtual friendships for almost a decade though, so I consider myself quite fortunate :D

I will probably lose most of them in the future for whatever reason still (me and my friends have long lives in front of us), but that's probably unavoidable.

Regarding the weird Discord thing, that place is quite different and, as every other place, there are different traditions and etiquettes. I'm not sure why she ghosted you, but perhaps she felt it was normal... *shrugs* don't worry too much about it :)

That said, coming back to the "small media", the nice thing with it and especially this place, is that all the phenomena that you described become evident and almost explicit: just like in a non-virtual pub, you know that you will find people that might stay in there for years, just as much as people going just once or twice.

I suppose that all of this is to say that, by making this fleeting nature clear, one doesn't expect to make "long term" friendships and so, once somebody goes away, they don't feel as bad as if they expected to bond a lot, if that makes sense.

I like to appreciate the present time, knowing too well that in the future neither of us may still be around...

That's a really nice way of seeing things :D

You know, considering this and the above, It's kinda a bummer that we lost most of this stuff in the metropolises of the Big Web.

Somehow, all of this slow, anonymous and well thought out discussion of the small web feels a lot more human and authentic than what most people have nowadays on their big "platforms" over there.

Kind of a sad note to end this, but I don't think it's actually that sad, as I said, such are the wonders of this unique medium of communication.

Indeed, I don't think that it's sad either, it's just... Different, I think.

Thanks for explaining yourself further, I really appreciate seeing such a thing from a different PoV :D

That said, I still haven't seen a pinball in here... Is there one somewhere?

inquiry

The only place online I feel truly free of identity hysteria is write/read accessed in this Lua script:

#! /usr/bin/env lua
if arg[1] then
  local handle = io.popen('mktemp')
  local file = handle:read()
  handle:close()
  os.execute('echo "classifieds" >' .. file)
  os.execute('echo "REPLACE" >>' .. file)
  os.execute('vic ' .. file)
  os.execute('echo "." >>' .. file)
  io.write('=== Post? (Ctrl-d == NO) ')
  local answer = io.stdin:read('*l')
  if answer then
    print('=== Posting...')
    local command = 'nc nightfall.city 1915 <' .. file
    print('=== ' .. command)
    os.execute(command)
  else
    print()
  end
  io.write('=== Delete ' .. file .. ' ? (Ctrl-d == NO) ')
  answer = io.stdin:read('*l')
  if answer then
    os.execute('rm ' .. file)
    print('=== Deleted ' .. file)
  else
    print('\n=== Kept ' .. file)
  end
else
  os.execute('elinks https://portal.mozz.us/nex/nightfall.city/classifieds/')
end

shoebx

I take the slip of paper containing the script, putting it in my pocket.

This sounds really interesting, thanks a lot, I didn't know about that part of the city. I can see some really nice uses out of it :D

inquiry

"I" get tired of limited/limiting i-dentity.

Mind warp time: actually, "I" got tired of i-dentity long ago, noting the burden of decision/choice "kills me", which is kind of funny because "I"/"me" is/am the pseudo entity so hell bent on being a possessor of free will, such that, in effect, the seeming possessor of free will winds up deader by its own choice of being able to choose....

I think that is how/why I became so fascinated by the book "The Diceman" (Luke Rhinehart) what now seems like eons ago.

In fact, interest bubbled up a couple weeks ago, leading to this Lua script (I named it "decide"), which takes a set of choices and randomly picks/"chooses" one:

#! /usr/bin/env lua
function one_to(max)
  local popen = io.popen('od -vAn -N4 -tu4 < /dev/random')
  local n = popen:read('*l')
  popen:close()
  n = string.gsub(n, '%s+', '')
  n = tonumber(n)
  if max then
    local max = tonumber(max)
    if max then
      n = n % max + 1
    end
  end
  return n
end
local choices = {}
print('Enter choices:')
while true do
  io.stdout:write(#choices+1 .. ') ')
  local choice = io.stdin:read('*l')
  if choice then
    table.insert(choices, choice)
  else
    break
  end
end
print('\n=== ' .. choices[one_to(#choices)])

(In case it's not obvious, Ctrl-d while inputting choices is what ends the input loop.)

(Yes, I know my code is maddening for being sans comments and/or empty lines, but I've explained why elsewhere, and just don't feel like explaining it again in this moment.)

So now when "I" don't want to be burdened with having to make a decision, I can let /dev/random "decide" for me!

This has me wondering if (per a Midnight Pub interaction I had with another patron on the notion of "RPG") there might be even greater freedom in developing a bunch of characters to "be", let /dev/random pick one from time to time, and rigorously play/"be" that character...? I mean literally "in real life"....? Might that end the burden of i-dentity/selfhood/individuality?

So... instead of giving the above script (or one like it) a list of things to do, I give it a list of characters to "be", and then run the script from time to time to know "who" to "be"....?

(Alternatively, building the characters into the script, complete with detailed character attribute descriptions so "I"'m reminded how to play/perform given roles...?)

(NOTE: "I"'m not saying I invented this idea. For all "I" know it's been around plenty long and "I"'m just slow to the party, as it were....)

Hmmm....

Of course, being married, what I really need to do is get my wife interested in doing the same, otherwise she'll wind up thinking I'm even more batshit crazy than she already does....

Anyway... thanks for stoking delightful thoughts along these lines!

inquiry

A bit more on the "RPG" thing.

I've never participated, but can anyone else here speak to whether there's a sort of "liberation" in role playing?

The reading material that most attracts me tends to emphasize that liberation is in *zero* i-dentity, *zero* role(s).

But now I'm wondering if infinite (or a large number, at least) context-switched roles accomplishes the same?

Or IS THAT WHAT SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING, i.e. all us stooges running around as though individual/separate instances of <ineffable>, thoroughly convinced of the reality of our be-ing *literally* to the point of "a fool (for being convinced of separate from <ineffable> is born every minute"...?

wow wow wow....

("Earth to detritus! Are you there, detritus?! Please come in, detritus!")

shoebx

Sorry for the delay, exams are soon so I've been busy but I feel like I need to relax a bit.

Anyway... thanks for stoking delightful thoughts along these lines!

My pleasure! :D

Regarding the above, in my (young and naive) experience, a core "personality" keeps me "sane", or at least attached to this reality. For me, identities are nothing more than masks, meant to "protect" this precious core, to separate interactions from "interfering" with my whole internal "social web". I know that this is all jumbly wumbly, but I guess that keeping track of too many people becomes scary and tiring in the long term.

Maybe that's behind the idea of having infinite identities you're mentioning, so to minimize the amount of people one has to consider while doing any form of interaction. That would be quite a liberation, I think.

I've not yet went as far as charging personas. It's weird to say, but I feel like an automaton: my memory is short and most of the time I feel like running in "self-driving mode", so I wouldn't be able to be mindful enough to "fake" a different personality altogether. I like being myself, you could say.

That said, role playing indeed is liberating. I actually played some actual "real life" RPG with some friends before (albeit through VOIP), but it didn't feel as liberating as a place like here, perhaps because I didn't need it yet.

And role playing isn't necessarily being somebody else; here, I'm reasonably "myself", just with a different mask. I just want to chill a bit in a nice pub like this, with a nice virtual (nonalcoholic) drink. Also, "walking around" feels quite therapeutic, even on the Web. You could argue that most people don't do that even there :P

inquiry

Somewhere along the line to "me", what you refer to as "a core 'personality'" seemed as much a mask/act as any other, except for being the first.

"I" can't say "I" remember it taking place, but having watched parents and their young ones, it seems "I" is first a notion as a sort of mathematical mean between the parents' notions of who the newborn "is" (there might be others nearby who contribute, e.g. "family"). That first - and, thus, "core" - notion and slowly added auxiliary/support notions are repeated until they seemingly manifest, i.e. miraculously self-referentially takes itself seriously (i.e. as though "real"), as sort of Phoenix arriving from ashes.

The process might be called "a first assisted, but eventually self-sustaining notional practice making perfect, aka seemingly real instead of merely notional.

Paths to a so-called "enlightenment" seem to be literally a *en- *lighten* -ing" of that notion hive/collective, it becoming "lighter" in terms of seeming to be something more than merely a complicated tree (programming sense) of notions kept seemingly alive by re-petition of said notions - both by itself, and by seeming others (e.g. "Hi there, inquiry!").

In other words, what we call our "self" has been the playing of a role unlike any other that might be played but for "fate"/accident having stoked its inception/conception first. Otherwise, it's no less fake than any other possible personality: 'tis all in the practicing/re-cognizing/re-iterating/re-membering that the "core" personality seems more real.

Ack. So hard to describe....

shoebx

Mh, I think I have a reasonable idea of what you're trying to explain, although I consider somebody's "core personality", roughly, the mathematical mean of everything they experience, not only their parents (otherwise people wouldn't argue with them, potentially leaving their families altogether :P)

That said, I would personally define my "core personality" more like the direct result of my beliefs, philosophy and whatnot (how I got there is probably the aforementioned mathematical mean).

Yes, the above is indeed "constructed" (and potentially interchangeable), but as I said I need something to put my feet onto, to attach myself with reality.

The "first mask", my "internal identity" is needed to have a "social interaction" with myself you could say, hence why I can't get rid of it without losing that "relationship", which in turn is also a point of reference for me.

You could also say that I got too emotionally attached to my "main personality" which, in a way, brings me back to the argument I'm having with ~detritus (and which I'll answer soon too) :D

That's subjective though; I'm sure that freeing oneself of every point of reference and challenging the core concepts of society (and in a way reality itself) is fun indeed, but I don't find the need for something like this, at least right now.

I like to have fun (and certainly I like overstimulating myself with weird music and crazy games) but a lot of stuff does not play nice with my brain, like alcohol or stimulants stronger than a good espresso :)

(I have no idea how some people drink like 3 energy drinks a day)

Talking about espressos, ~bartender, could I please have one? The usual way. Thanks!

So, in short, I think I might be too weak/simple/plain/emotional/whatever to be able to enjoy or even just withstand such a huge tear in my perception like you're describing, which BTW sounds like a very, very interesting point of view.

I really appreciate discussing this and being mindful about such a concept will do it for "me", thanks :)

*sips coffee*

inquiry

> Mh,

Oh, wow... I'd completely forgotten how much I once loved "mhmail"!

> You could also say that I got too emotionally attached
> to my "main personality" which, in a way, brings me back
> to the argument I'm having with ~detritus (and which I'll
> answer soon too) :D

I've really enjoyed interacting with detritus!

> I really appreciate discussing this and being mindful
> about such a concept will do it for "me", thanks :)

It's been fun. Toodles!

detritus

* ~detritus approaches a table with a man who seems to have had one too many *

What is going on here? Talk about RPGs? Sure! I like a good old RPG now and then. In fact, I was just thinking of downloading a few old Final Fantasy titles.

There's an interesting idea here... if we are just the um, universal consciousness jumping from body to body in order to experience itself.... can we replicate this in our programs? Have a single process experience the system in the guise of very different programs... maybe the ensuing confusion will imbue in it something we could call life?

I seem to have had too much to drink too, excuse me...

~bartender, do you have alka-seltzer?

inquiry

> There's an interesting idea here... if we are just the um,
> universal consciousness jumping from body to body in order
> to experience itself.... can we replicate this in our
> programs? Have a single process experience the system in
> the guise of very different programs... maybe the ensuing
> confusion will imbue in it something we could call life?

This new powdered psilocybin drink additive I've been using is fabuloso!

detritus

~bartender, I'll have one of those, too!

inquiry

Awareness of its source sans thoughts works too.