Pseudoanonymity

Cloaked within a shrouded mystery of thorough unrevealedness, Leopoldtulip sits at his computer, laughing. His is the power to type things, things deemed too controversial even for words, and all with complete anonymity. Except for the fact that a bunch of people know who he is.

I have taken steps to secure my secret identity, of course. I call myself "Leopoldtulip." Nevertheless, over the months of this blog's history, people have repeatedly called me "John" in the comment box. There are only so many times I can type, "I do not know this John person of which you speak, for I am the great and powerful Oz!" before it gets old. Nevertheless, for some strange reason it is psychologically re-assuring to pretend that people can't figure out who I am: For instance, I never refer to "my wife" by name, even though there's this person named "Teresa H.T." who leaves the kind of comments that a wife (or at least a kept woman) would. In trying to deceive others about my identity, have I deceived only myself that I am deceiving anyone?

I also must admit that I apply a double-standard: I do not name my wife, but I constantly refer to our cats, Cricket and Pippin. My wife has suggested that, given the distinctive names of our cats, it would be easier for someone to guess my identity based on the cats' names rather than my wife's, given the large number of people named Wife in the world. Her argument makes a lot of sense intellectually, but not psychologically. Perhaps it is because I just think of cats as being harmless, non-sentient beings. They have no credit card history or webpages that an enterprising private detective can trace. They are prisoners here and can never try to sell their story to ABC. And if I didn't call them "Cricket and Pippin," what would I call them in my blog? Thing 1 and Thing 2?

I suppose what makes me saddest about the inadequacy of my anonymity is that it makes it harder to effect real social change. I was just reading an article about how the anonymous blogger Brewster Pennybaker at Alfred College crafted an "I hate my College President, Uma Gupta" blog. Every entry, one would learn a new reason to dislike Gupta, such as that she took a four-day weekend over Memorial Day, that she must suffer from personality disorder, that she must be paranoid, etc. (I can't imagine why she'd think that someone was out to get her ...) The blogger even successfully mobilized marginally apathetic faculty members into seething masses of burning hatred. Now, there's a blog that effects real social change: things got so bad that Gupta eventually left. And No matter how hard Gupta tried, she could never figure out what person hated her so much that he/she dedicated an entire blog to her destruction.

I could never do that to someone. Not just in the sense that I'm a nice guy, but in the sense that I don't want someone getting back at me. There's just no way that I could viciously assault someone's character on this blog and prevent that person from finding out who I am. What if someday I want to brutally savage the government and/or reveal military secrets? It is true that, when Jonathan Swift anonymously wrote the controversial "Drapier Letters," no Irishman would turn him in for the 300 pound reward from the English, even though his identity was an open secret in Ireland. It is also the case that he didn't have a comment box where people were calling him "Swiftyboy," either. Man, I could actually be held personally responsible for what I write. That sucks!