The real name artificial reality bubble

[firecat]

Kee Hinckley on Google+ (public, so visible to people who aren't members) discusses the real difference between social networks where real names are required and those where names are up to the individuals.

https://plus.google.com/117903011098040166012/posts/Ax8tyxVMa5w

Excerpt (emphasis mine):

When you create a social networking site that requires real names, you create an artificial bubble. What you see is just the nice things in people's lives, you don't see what's really happening. But when people have control over who knows their name, they still talk about cute cats and the latest iPhone and what kind of wine they drank last night, but they also talk about other things. They talk about dealing with their parent's Alzheimer's. They talk about how their daughter was missing for three days and got drugged and raped and the police refused to follow up. They talk about how they just lost their job and they're worried that they'll end up on the street. They talk about how their boss will fire them if he finds out they're gay. They talk about how they were sexually abused as a kid. They talk about what it's like to live in a country where bloggers get thrown in prison. People don't dare talk about those things with their birth names; not when Google is indexing everything they say.
...
The sad thing is, if you're dealing with something difficult in your life, that bubble also makes you think you're alone. You think you're the only one, because nobody else is talking about how they're going to pay for their parents nursing care, or how hard it is to juggle work and family.

This is quite true in my experience. I see a lot more of people's real lives on DW and LJ than on Facebook.

A commenter on the original post disagreed and said that it's fine for you to not use your real name on G+, you just have to use an ordinary sounding name, not what he called a "fantasy name." This isn't true as far as I can ascertain, but it makes me want to play a game with G+ where thousands of us all join under the same ordinary sounding name ("John Smith," if we use the typical ordinary sounding name of my culture).

Comments

re: The real name artificial reality bubble

[betonica]

Excellent points. I like the part you've got bolded, up there. Makes it clear how the name policy really, really affects all of us who participate.

I'm over there under my real name (I always was on usenet, and I am on facebook, too) but I've been contemplating attempting to open an account as the Blonde Ice Bitch From Hell (or some other alternate personality) just to see what happens. Being quieter about it and calling myself John Smith might be a good idea, too.

I'm still thinking this through. I agree entirely that G+'s current policy is ultra-bad. I'm hoping some sort of revolution will happen to change it, but I'm also not holding my breath.

Waiting game. And if it seems like there's something I can do that will actually make a difference, I'll do that. Someone suggested getting the media involved: getting mainstream America to see G+ as doing something bad might just have an impact on them. So that's another thought, but I don't know that I've got the energy to go that route.

[pne]

A commenter on the original post disagreed and said that it's fine for you to not use your real name on G+, you just have to use an ordinary sounding name, not what he called a "fantasy name." This isn't true as far as I can ascertain

Depends on the definition of "fine", I suppose.

It's against the terms of service, as far as I know, but unlikely to get you suspended, at least compared to using an "obviously" (to whom?) fake name. Or so it seems to me.

it makes me want to play a game with G+ where thousands of us all join under the same ordinary sounding name ("John Smith," if we use the typical ordinary sounding name of my culture).

One thing I can predict is that it will become almost impossible to plus-mention anyone reliably, because IIRC you only get five or so to pick from, which may or may not include the person you wanted (if you can even tell them apart, say from their picture).

[oursin]

When you create a social networking site that requires real names, you create an artificial bubble. What you see is just the nice things in people's lives, you don't see what's really happening.

This was a thought that occurred to me when there was a newspaper article recently about adolescents becoming depressed and even suicidal when they saw all their friends apparently having a good time via Facebook. Because there's a certain sundial effect of only counting sunny hours.

[sofiaviolet]

Yes, I can definitely understand that. Makes me grateful that I went through teenagerdom (wherein I was... frequently suicidal, shall we say, and I knew I wasn't alone) before teens had migrated to platforms like Facebook.

[cleverthylacine]

The other thing I liked about LJ and still like about DW now was that while your age was in your profile, people didn't always look, and you weren't sorted toward people by age or workplace/school, you had interests searches for finding friends. So I could get into a new fandom or ship or thing and find other people who liked it.

I always thought that was a good thing for teens, because you and a bunch of other teens were LJ-friends with me and a bunch of other older people with shared interests when you were a teen.

And so there you were, being troubled, for want of a better word. But not only were there other people your age in your circle who had troubles, there were people like me and my older friends in your circles, and we not only had troubles, but had figured out some ways to cope with them, and were out of our parents' houses and on our own and we didn't have to tell you that "It Gets Better" because you could SEE that even though I was still depressed and still had trouble dealing with certain kinds of authorities and all that, I was out on my own and over 30 and still alive and glad I hadn't killed myself when I was 15. I don't know if that was a big thing for you personally, but I know it was a big thing for some of the other teenagers I was friends with; we talked about it. I talked a lot with the people who were teens and active in LW about stuff like this.

(Although I had to deal with a certain amount of envy for people who got to be teenagers in a world with GSAs and anti-bullying initiatives and better brain drugs and shrinks, LOL @ me.)

I had a circle on LJ, and have one here, that has a lot of people older and younger than me on it, and one of the benefits of that for me is the ability to see problems coming and know they can be coped with. You and Niki and Flourish and Verity all had friends in college and friends in the working world when you were teens; I had friends who lost their folks, or who had to deal with harassment of various kinds in the workplace, before I did, and so I too got the benefit of knowing those things can be coped with, even though it's hard, and that it still keeps on Getting Better.

I'm not a teenager, but Facebook is really annoying to me that way at 47, and at 15 I think I'd have wanted to shoot things since I pretty much already did.

Although it is hilarious the part where the boy I wanted to run off with and marry when I was 17 is now a huge Farmville addict who does nothing on FB but annoy me; I suspect our parents did us a favour there...

[sofiaviolet]

Yes. I mean, in the moment, I was just happy to get a bunch of *hugs* whenever I posted about how much everything sucked, but with a few years' perspective, all the *hugs* in the world from other teenagers wouldn't have been worth nearly so much as a couple of *hugs* from people I admired, liked and/or respected on the basis of what they said when they weren't being my support network.

I think that ability to find "people like me" in categories other than the societally conditioned/approved/enabled groupings like age, location, school/workplace etc. is what makes socializing on the internet valuable. Things like Facebook - sites that assume those offline groups are the only valid ways of doing it - strike me as dull and constrained. They lack the the scifi-ish optimism of making new connections with new people because of shared interests rather than enforced proximity.

[libskrat]

This. All of it. There's also a "shiny happy people" effect, which I doubt I need to explain.

Being a curmudgeon of epic proportions, I don't dare show my face on G+.

[adrian_turtle]

I think this is true for the overwhelming majority of cases, but there's a significant exception: Status counters stigma. If an individual has ENOUGH privilege built up, enough status attached to their real name, they may feel safe disclosing a stigmatized problem. One stigmatized problem (though somebody in a position like Betty Ford or Oprah Winfrey may be able to get away with disclosing two, even three--if the first disclosure gets a sympathetic response.) Many people with serious stigmatized problems are overwhelmed by a cascade of such problems, which makes them quite reasonably afraid to publicize them.

[elainegrey]

I forget, again, how the services are interlocking, but i use google docs for work. I think it's how they are interlocking their services that bugs me even more, as it seems that some of the interconnections are not predictable. So if i change my name to Elaine Grey on google+, i change it everywhere. But not at youtube, apparently.

Anyhow, yes, my sharing -- whether it's my real name or the real name handle -- is in the shiny happy bubble. Which is why i don't know what to share there. And here, as elaine grey, i share happily all the infelicities of life.

[jesse_the_k]

It depends on whether your work is using Google Apps, and supplying that software service to all the staff — in that case I don't think your name is connected. But if you're using Google Docs as a just another user of Google's "largesse," then the connections may mean a violation of GooglePlus TOS would torpedo your G-Docs.

[pipisafoat]

I see a lot more of people's real lives on DW and LJ than on Facebook.

Yes. See, here's the thing - when you can use a pseudonym, you can control who knows who/where/when you are. (er, by "when" i mean "age" and whatnot. i think we are all communicating from the same time period.) I can talk about these things in my life, and it's just another person, albeit someone with whom you can have a personal relationship. Or I can talk about these things, and you know who I am offline. And that's in my control, and it means that I can talk publicly about whatever I need to say without fear, because who can connect my online name to my offline name is entirely under my control. I'm not even on Facebook (unheard of for anyone at all, much less anyone in my age range) because I don't want to go back into any sort of closet about anything. (And other reasons, but mostly that one.)

[twisted_times]

"...it makes me want to play a game with G+ where thousands of us all join under the same ordinary sounding name ("John Smith," if we use the typical ordinary sounding name of my culture)."

I'm on G+ under the name Spartacus, along with quite a few other people as there's been rather a spate of Spartacus-flavoured accounts set up lately. :)

[evilawyer]

Hah! You're all brilliant, Spartacuses. Or is it Spartichi?

[twisted_times]

Spartacae, since it's Greek? O_o

[cleverthylacine]

This is so, so true.

[jesse_the_k]

Excellent points, all, thank you. Makes me glad I'm here.

[evilawyer]

What this guy says is spot on. I don't understand how the Google misses this, or thinks it can ramrod people into giving it up.

Jo Blow. If I joined Google+ (which I haven't because I don't want to give even a real sounding name that can be traced to my area), I'd want to be Jo Blow.

[chaos_by_design]

This article is brilliant. I actually wound up giving G+ feedback and linking to this article, saying that it explained my point far more eloquently than I could.

[eggcrack]

Excellent points, and that's been my experience too. Even Tumblr, despite its "micro" nature, is more personal than Facebook.

[kitrona.livejournal.com]

I use "Jitka (Kitrona) *Lastname*" and I'm ok so far. I don't know if that counts or what.

[firecat]

It's technically against their naming rules.

[kitrona.livejournal.com]

I know. I was just commenting to give you another datapoint.

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you.

I share MUCH more on LJ than on LJ or on Google+. And I see a lot more of other people here too.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

The bit about indexing everything has been a real issue with me. I just had a conversation here on LJ that bothered me, so I deleted it, and I realized I'm not sure that I'd have had that conversation on G+, especially not now.

I won't say that this violates their "don't be evil" pledge; it's a free service, after all. But just thinking about the implications here really bothers me.

[firecat]

I'm curious why you think free services should be judged by different standards than pay services on the "don't be evil" scale.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, any free service on the internet should make a person think that it's going to be paid for somehow. There are ways G+ could be evil, but, just being a free service that is glomming information doesn't make it evil.

If it were a paid service, I'd expect that it's more like web hosting than social networking, like with LJ or Dreamwidth.