Something is betrayed, when this happens. It reveals something about how people think about pseudonyms. It would seem many people think of pseudonyms, in a sort of unconsidered way, as being things that don't attach to actual identities.

But my pseudonym is very much attached to an actual identity - I am very much a person, and a very distinct one, who exhibits a lot of personality, who moves freely through social worlds, with whom one can develop various types of relationship, from the parasocial to the intimate. For those who have the unconsidered assumption that pseudonyms do not refer to identities, the fact that mine does causes a category error, and causes them to forget (or maybe even never notice) that the appellation by which they know me as a pseudonym, and unsubtly one at that.

I've seen other evidence of this conceptual fault line, for instance in discussions of the threats and value of allowing pseudonymous commenters on the internet, around platform policies.

In any event, I think that in reasoning about pseudonyms and anonymity on the internet, a lot of people, maybe most people, make the mistake of thinking in terms of pseudonym usage, which is a behavior, and not in terms of pseudonym users, which is a demographic. An identity, if you will.

Allow me to explain. It is, I propose, extremely fruitful to look at pseudonym usage as something some people do not at all, other people do some, and yet other people do exclusively, or near to it.

I, for example, do not use public social media under my professional name. As a matter of policy, I do not socialize in public on the internet using the name my patients know me by. My reasons for this are several, and I bet at least one of them would surprise you.

As a consequence, if a public forum has a "real name" policy, I don't think, "Oh, bummer, I guess I'll have to use my wallet name". I think, "Oh, bummer, I won't be using this forum, then."

I'm pretty sure that's not what people who promulgate "real name" policies are thinking is going to happen. I'm pretty sure they think they're making a rule about how their users are to behave on their system. They think using a pseudonym as a behavior, and that they are regulating that behavior. I'm pretty sure it never crossed their mind that what they're actually doing is making a rule about who can be a user of their system. It didn't occur to them that what they're doing is forbidding pseudonymous users from joining their platform.

Allow me to put a very fine point on this: if your platform doesn't allow pseudonym usage, as a pseudonymous user, your platform discriminates against me. My reasons for pseudonym usage are good ones, and your social media platform is never going to be valuable enough to me to outweigh those considerations. I will not be changing that behavior.

Furthermore, it's not just me of course that you will be discriminating against, and that pretty much guarantees that I'm not going to want to have anything to do with your platform anyways. I generally prefer online social scenes where everyone uses a pseudonym, or at least it's very common.

It's funny to me how people have these beliefs about the value of "real name" policies as basically positive forces of moderation to improve the sociability of a forum, but all the best, most popular, most fun, most informative forums, are resolutely pseudonymous: Twitter (once upon a time), Reddit, Slashdot, StackExchange, the Fediverse, e.g. Meanwhile, places with real name policies like Facebook, or even just places where real name usage becomes too common (arguably Twitter now), are terrible drags.

The evidence of people's experience would teach them, if they listened, that actually pseudonymous norms lead to much more appealing forums then real name policies do.

I figured this out a long time ago. Online forums that have real name policies can have certain utility, but they wind up feeling tragically corporate and stultifying. I, for one, have no interest in trying to conduct my social life in such a context. I don't not use Facebook because I disapprove of their security practices or their ethical practices or any other reasonable principled position: I don't use Facebook because it's boring and tedious and filled with unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly. Ew.

In the past it's been made to clear to me by friends who work for Facebook that they'll get my pseudonym approved if I want. I do not want. *My* getting to use *my* pseudonym on Facebook does not solve the problem at all of how dreadfully dreary and stilted Facebook is because they didn't let *everyone* use their pseudonyms. Everyone behaving like their boss or their mom could show up at any minute (or maybe already has) is not my idea of a party.

And I honestly don't think it's anybody's idea of a party. It's just most people haven't made the connection.

And then there's the fact that among the pseudonymous population are overrepresented all of the coolest people. The people who are gendery. The people who've done cool enough things to have earned cool epithets. The people in strange subcultural demimondes. The people crossing the line of the law to engage in victimless vices.

And above all, the artists. The people with pen names and stage names. The poets and the troubadours, the novelists and the magicians, the divas and the circus freaks, the comedians and the essayists, the movie stars and the rock stars.

Real name policies are like signs that say "freaks use the back door". Yeah, even if you would let me into your pathetic little party, I know none of the other freaks decided to come in the back door and I'm going to go figure out where their party is and go there instead.

My experience taught me, over and over and over again, that pseudonym usage being normal in a community, whether online or off, is a pretty reliable sign of a community that is going to turn out to be vibrant, creative, liberal, politically aware, and intellectual, and valuing authenticity, vulnerability, learning, risk-taking, curiosity, wonder, delight, and joy. Their food will be better, their arguments more rollicking, their clothes more luxurious, their entertainments more transporting, and their lovers better lays.

Their computer security tends to be better too.