Tuesday, August 2, 2011

It's all in the name.

With the recent spate of account bans for “fake names” on G+, for obvious reasons, I am a bit concerned. Not in the least because of my G+ name. I'm not in a hurry to change it, though. And I am just a little irked by that the majority opinion seems to be that this is an unqualified good thing.

Let me let you in on a secret. My “actual” name is Zachary Boody, I'm an unemployed 22 year old stuck in the rural area outside of Lincoln, NE. It's not a secret. Anyone who knows me, even online, knows most of that info. I'm not a secretive person. Here's the thing, though. With all of that information, good luck finding me. I'm not the only one. It's a peculiarly common name. I'm not even the only one in Lincoln. It caused no shortage of confusion at school ages ago. It's about as personally identifiable as me liking spicy food, or knowing how to drive.

And my supposedly personally identifiable name is likely to change far sooner than my handle is. When my mom got married, I went by her husband's name for a time. When I get married, I plan on taking my now-girlfriend's name. You know what hasn't changed in all that, and for around 15 years, my handle hasn't. I tripped over it as a typo during a sleep-deprived online gaming session when I was 7, and it stuck.

Maybe I'm biased. I am not exactly known for my stellar social life. It's not helped by the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere, but family aside, no one would really care too much if suddenly my real-life name was Bob Smith. A lot less confused than people would be if I changed my handle. Really, there's no one that would be able to find me on G+ using my “real” name that doesn't know my handle, and a lot of people that couldn't find me by my real name that know my handle. It seems a simple choice to me which one to use.

As an aside, perhaps I should clarify my (ab)use of quotes. It's probably pretty clear from the above, I consider Kannon a truer representation of who I am than my given name. I had some input on that, I'm looking to ditch my last name anyway. And, as I said, I've run into a lot more Zachs with the same last name than I ever have Kannons. (Using both last names, even!) I even met the love of my life (Who currently lives with me) online.

Combine that with living in a place where I have about as much in common with the average person as an electric car has with a combine harvester, and most people who truly know me, met me as Kannon. Claiming that it's not my actual identity because it's a psudonym misses the entire point. I could change my profile name to my actual name. But isn't the whole point to have a name that people identify you with?


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