Should I use a Pseudonym on Social Media?
For my article review, I chose Identity Tableaux: Multimodal Contextual Constructions of Adolescent Identity by Martin Lalonde, Juan Carlos Castro, and David Pariser. The authors were interested in the question: "How does having to represent oneself, in different contexts and using different media literacies, affect an individual's performance of his or her identity online?"
They formed a private group of 20 students for the research study, which centered around making photos and posting them on Instagram, all using pseudonyms.
The results? They found that social interaction is initiated by the image. The posted image serves as a cornerstone to a complex, multimodal representation of personal and emotional experiences through which participants construct their identity.
They also understood that the primary motivation was to externalize inner states and ideas of who they are. In other words, their main motivation was to construct and present their identity to others. Their relationship to their peers was essential to their process of identity formation.
While I tend to agree with the research results on a surface level - yes, identities are performed and they are social (by default on social media); but not all of us remain anonymous on social media. I found Tiger's question thought-provoking: "Did pseudonyms prove to be a beneficial or efficient way for genuine interaction?"
While the authors did not succinctly examine the quality of interaction or compare it with other forms of interaction, this question inspired me to think more about the implication of using pseudonyms in social media and whether genuine interaction could arise from that decision.
My experience on Instagram tells me that naming is extremely binary: you either remain completely anonymous or unveil all of your personal information. It's almost impossible to stay in the middle, as those who interact with you will give away a lot of information about who you are anyway. Reflecting on my personal choices, it's not that I deliberately chose to use my real name, the option of using a fake name did not even come up.
Why would someone go out of their way to use a pseudonym in the first place?
Let's be honest, what we see on Instagram might not be the whole truth. We carefully select and share bits of what we want others to see, the highlight reel of a life lived in a VSCO filter. And that is not because we naturally all live for that "aesthetics". The feedback from our audiences through sharing these photos and experiences is the main driver of social media use amongst teenagers (Lalonde et al, 2015).
Maybe using a pseudonym could help. We all think about the content we put on our social media accounts, but how much is too much to share? Especially with a diverse range of audiences on our one personal Instagram account, how do we separate our personal and professional identities when the need arises? Boundaries help us build imaginary fences around real things. And using a pseudonym helps us establish our boundaries. It also provides us with a fresh start, where nobody knows your real identity, and you have the chance to curate your content and audience all over again.
In fact, Judith Donath, author of The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online, believes that well-intentioned pseudonyms can enrich our online interactions, contradicting the concept that fake names equal trolling. We’re not talking about creating fake names to deliberately incite hate or rage online; rather, we’re cultivating a separate identity through which we can privately explore aspects of
our personality that we don’t need to attach to how others perceive us personally or professionally.
In a 2014 Wired opinion piece, Donath explains that pseudonyms allow us to healthily compartmentalize certain aspects of our identities and lives, and the manner in which we use our real names online differs from how we use them in-person:
In the physical world, space and time separate facets of our lives, providing everyday privacy. Even though you use your real name in conversations you have in person with your podiatrist or pastor, those conversations and opinions are not accessible to your co-workers and neighbors. Online, however, the product review you generously provided for an underarm deodorant or for books about coping with binge eating or bed-wetting, will, if written under your real name, be part of your online portrait, what your neighbors, kids, and random strangers see about you. Online, words persist forever, in vast searchable databases. Anything you say or do using your real name is permanently attached to it.
(Privacy support guidance by Yelp)
Some teenagers use finsta as a way to cultivate genuine interaction. Finsta, short for fake Instagram, generally refers to a second Instagram account along with their real Instagrams to post any pictures or video, usually funny or embarrassing, only for their closest friends. While this is not a separate identity that Donath talked about, a parallel identity catered to a smaller group of audiences might also help.
Genuine is one of my favorite words. It is also one of the words that I rarely associate with the Internet. Social media has been quite toxic because I want to build relationships with people who accept all of me, offline, not just the “perfect” and convenient parts that I tend to present online. With that said, I am still figuring out how to show the "whole" me online, if that possible, and whether I feel comfortable doing so. As a result, I rarely spend time obsessing over the highlight reels of someone-I-know's life and keep up with my friends through other channels.
Hi Echo,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your emphasis on genuine interaction. I have seen some people with pseudonyms attacking others on the Internet, everywhere across different platforms and cultures. Though I never do so, I sometimes feel I'm transformed into a different identity when I use my pseudonym accounts. I can talk about my opinions more bravely, and I don't care about other people's reactions so much. In this case, I'm actually writing posts for my own reflection rather than for entertaining others or getting attentions. It makes me wonder what is "genuineness". Is confirming what others think of you genuine? Or is it you just being you? It's not so easy to be genuine with a real and socially expected identity. However, when using a pseudonym, I also don't feel being genuine, because I'm doing it for myself rather than sharing my information and getting to know others. It's like a dilemma. I guess it depends on the individual, but it's a very interesting to think about.
Hi Ningcong,
DeleteThank you for your thoughtful comment! What you had brought up about using pseudonyms to attack others is interesting - I have definitely seen the same and have always wondered the motivation behind it. Maybe it's so that they don't unveil their true identity. maybe it's just an outlet for them to vent, maybe it's something completely unrelated. Regardless, there seems to be more negative activities associated with pseudonym use. This made me wonder if people only put on their "nice" selves when someone is watching. I also came across this analysis on passwords, which, by default, is not seen by others, and surprisingly contained all positive words including love, blessed, sunshine, etc. Check it out here: https://blog.jimmyr.com/Password_analysis_of_databases_that_were_hacked_28_2009.php It's so fun to think about, isn't it? Who do we become when no one is watching?
HI Echo,
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting topic! When I transitioned to pubic school teaching a few years ago, part of our training included changing our real names on social media to "something else" so that students would not be able to find us. The efficacy of this was questionable, as our social media accounts still held the connections to other people and places that could identify us, and any middle or high school student who looked hard enough could certainly find us. As you describe, new account with a pseudonym gives a new freedom of expression and creativity, and users are less affected by comments and critiques of others. However, these partial pseudo accounts did not give us anonymity or freedom.
Pseudonyms may also give some users the freedom to offend others, yet Facebook is filled with community pages where neighbors attack neighbors using their real names. Clearly not everyone needs to be anonymous to be mean. As you point out, the existence of Finsta accounts shows us that we need use a fake account to hide the real us, while our highlight reel promotes the fake us.
Hello Christine,
DeleteThanks for visiting my page! Your last sentence is so poetic: "we need to use a fake account to hide the real us, while our highlight reel promotes the fake us". That perfectly captures the irony that I try to picture. It's sad but it seems to be the norm.
To be completely honest, I had a finsta with around 13 close friends following that I updated daily for almost a year. I was managing two accounts at the same time. When I would switch from my main account to my finsta, the ads on my feed also changed, and they were very different - I would constantly get Chinese Language Summer Camp ads on my main account and cheap clothing recommendations on my finsta. The reason I'm bringing this up is I'm guessing that because I have two profiles, the machine assumed that whoever was behind these accounts had different interests. It almost felt as if it read my two accounts as two different people.
When we use pseudonyms and our real name interchangeably, we know that it's just us messing with the system. I am quite curious about how machines understand pseudonyms and when it would make the connection that it might be the same person behind.