I was recently asked to offer my thoughts on the unmasking of the once-anonymous blogger known as Grog’s Gamut. My thoughts were requested on the general idea of whether I considered it to be okay for bloggers to have their identities revealed.
Let the records show that I do not think this is a good idea.
This isn’t because I, Tesla Patent Pending, am some political heavyweight by day, or secretly working for the competition and must mask my identity; far from it. The main compelling reason for writing under a nom de plume on the PopSci website is that, paradoxically, it allows me to write more as myself than if I was using my real name.
It’s not that I get to be more reckless and free of accountability; it’s more that I’m free of the overthinking tendencies that are associated with my real-life name and able to write more freely as the Tesla Patent Pending personality.
In my other article-forging job where I have to writer under my real-life name, there’s a lot of pressure to write to particular audiences in a contextually appropriate voice. These are reasonable and understandable expectations, but it also means that readers and potential employers are judging how well you achieve this end and associating it with your hard-to-avoid real-life name.
When writing a blog under a pseudonym, I’m essentially being judged on how effectively I communicate ideas as Tesla Patent Pending. Perhaps it’s a psychological tick, but it definitely makes this work easier in the sense that agonising over tone and audience appropriateness are less pressing necessities.
What do the rest of you think?
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