Met Moxie

A couple of my personal web favourites, Frills and fLaMEd, have recently been inspired to write about their choice to use a pseudonym online by Kev Quirk’s What about anonymous blogging?. I thought I might add my own perspective to the mix, because I’ve only recently decided to go “anon” as a blogger.

I had always used my real name online. There were a few years where I chose to use my nickname as my “main name”, but you could still find my given name on my about page or in the copyright information in the footer. I have a really cool and unique name that I’m fond of and it felt weird to call myself anything other than that name. Even the nickname took some getting used to!

Before the advent of Facebook, I had zero awareness of the fact that anyone could just plug my name into a search engine and find my personal website. But because Facebook also ushered in an era of normalising or even demanding the use of your real name online, the cognizance I gained was ultimately useless.

I’d never had a problem with people from my offline life finding me online. I am the same person online as I am off with the same interests and willingness to talk about it all. The only real difference is that no one offline would ever let me babble on as much as I do here and I don’t kvetch as much offline (for the same reason). 😂

I also have the same opinions offline as I do online and because I am disabled and don’t (usually) have a job to lose, I’m not worried about something I’ve said being used against me to ~ruin my life~. So I had no qualms with attaching my name to the things I make and write.

However, during the pandemic, I had the brilliant idea™ to start a true crime and social science podcast. It was during that time that I found out that the Dutch government had publicly listed my personal information under my name when I registered as a freelancer back in 2018.

I didn’t even consider this would even be legal, as the Netherlands is party to the GDPR, but when I asked for the information to be removed, they told me that legally, they didn’t have to. So instead, I had to spend the next two years checking search engines for third-party websites who scraped the information and asking those websites to remove it.

I eventually gave up on the podcast idea because I was just too scared that, even under a pseudonym, the weirdos could find me. But I still wanted to be able to use my own name online because… it’s MY NAME, yanno? So I continued to check search engines and had any scraped data removed so I could still at least use my name to continue my personal web journey.

So, why am I using a pseudonym now? After being so intent on being able to use my real name and having excuses for all the internet safety aspects being “anon” can provide? It’s not because a weirdo found me or because someone had a problem with something I said and decided to use it against me.

No. It was because an absolute fruit loop of a woman decided stalking was a reasonable action to take after accosting me for “irresponsible dog ownership” and finding out that I am not Dutch. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have let this bother me and just blocked her and moved on, but the current anti-immigrant political climate made that an unsafe choice.

So, THAT’S why I now blog anonymously. I had convinced myself that sharing myself under my real name online wasn’t going to affect me in the offline world (as I’d been doing it for 25+ years already), but it only took one mildly scary incident to change my mind. And it didn’t even come in the form I had expected it to!

If you’re considering starting your personal web journey or are already writing under your real name, you should definitely think about adopting a pseudonym. Not only to keep yourself safe even when you believe it’s unnecessary like me, but also for all the great reasons written about by others who have also answered Kev Quirk’s question.