In reply to Roddy Lumsden, who wrote about "people
abusing the list with false identities... Surely there
must be some way of checking that list members are
genuine before they sign up?"
Who says you can't be "genuine" and use a different
name sometimes, if it happens to express another side
of your personality? Ever since I discovered how easy
it is to get email addresses without identifying
yourself, I've used, for different purposes, (and not
here) three or four e-identities that aren't the ones
I was born with, but which enable me to say or do
things my first identity might not. I know a fair
number of others who are into this. Admittedly some do
it for purposes of criminal deception but most are
just interested in, for example, knowing how it feels
to have people react to what you say in the belief
that you're a man rather than a woman - certainly
makes odds to the patronising attitude of some men.
Isn't pretending to be someone else, creating a
character, part of what writers do anyway? Personally
I don't care whether the character's fictional or not,
provided he/she says interesting things. And so what
of you react to them in the belief that they're real?
It doesn't make you a fool, and it doesn't mean your
sympathy is wasted, unless you have so little of it
that you can't spare any. I've felt pain for plenty of
fictional characters and I always assumed that if
anything, it would help me react more sympathetically
to real people too. It would be better to open up to
potential "bores and clowns" than to be a cliquish
little in-group with the same names constantly
responding to each others' quips, sneers and musings.
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