Okay, for the record, if one more person trots out a sweetly naive statement about how real names make you nicer and improve accountability, please for the love of God actually learn what the internet is (hint: it requires actually getting on it and not theorizing about it). Once that has been achieved, go to Facebook--I'm assuming you can find it--and look at what all those real names actually do, what groups they make--under their names--and what they say--again, under their names.

IRL we do shitty things under our real names. If empathy and accountability are supposed to be synonymous with real names, then your understanding of the history of the human race is fatally goddamn flawed.

I'm not going to defend pseudonymity by making arguments about all the reasons why someone would or should or could or needs to; no one should have to, since that's what life is.

We live IRL pseudonymity all the time; my son, my parents, my coworkers, my boss all use different variations of my name, my title, my salutation, some pieces of which will never show up on a driver's license or government record, and yet, somehow, the internet claims a higher fucking authority than the parents who raised me, the child I am raising, my boss, my minister, my best friend, my sisters, my aunt, my friends, my classmates, people I meet at clubs, people I meet in other countries, and what I call myself?

To clarify: google+ requires a higher level of disclosure than my actual honest to God real life. And it requires I give that to everyone, ever, in perpetuity.

Are. You. Serious?

I'm not so much wondering if anyone arguing Real Names for All has ever been to the internet, but exactly how you navigate real life at all.

Crossposted to google+ and LJ. I miss crossposting.

Okay, so Google+, question, because I am possibly losing numerology or something.

Under Circles, it says People In Your Circle (X) and People Who Have Added You (Y). These numbers are entirely different from the numbers in my profile: In Jenn's Circle (small number) and Have Jenn in Circles(very small number). Is this a bug or am I missing something here that's so painfully obvious I will be shamed forever?

I think I can prove fangirl geek credentials that I actually accepted the invitation with no clear idea what it was and I'm still wandering around it doing the equivalent of decorating in the dark.

*pokes it carefully* No biting yet. But I am getting wary about this name business coming up in the Stream.

...does that sound like a Farscape thing for a really speical wormhole? The Stream. Huh.