i remember a thread with an almost identical title cropping up on the very first forum i ever used, around two decade ago.
my answer now is exactly the same as it was then, though i think i can express it more clearly now:
i have no "online life". i exist, and everyone i know likewise exists. there's no "online". there's no "offline". there's just people.
this isn't a petty semantic frustration, i mean it literally. i have never viewed reality as divided between online and offline, it just doesn't make sense to me. people don't stop being real just because they're communicating to you through a method other than physical contact.
everyone i know, i communicate with via some method involving the internet. even if we occasionally (or regularly) share physical space, we still primarily communicate online. i email my gp, and my therapist.
in fact, i've found companies now refuse to communicate in a way that doesn't involve the internet, even if i'm explicitly telling them to.
i've said, to quite a few proffesional people who have expressed discomfort with communicating via email, you have my address. send me a letter instead, and i'll respond in kind. and they're always even weirder about that.
sometimes i'll get an email from some business or other that they don't have a phone number for me on file, and would i update my details? if it looks automated (most of them are), i won't respond. if it's clearly hand-written and comes from a specific address (human-name@company.com instead of customer-support@company.com) i'll respond that this is not a mistake, and that as evidenced they do have my correct email address. if they feel digital communication is insecure, they also have my postal address and are free to send me a letter. and they will continue to email me.
it's weird how...weird...people, and especially companies, are about sending letters. they will email, they will text, they will phone, they may even have a chatbot, but they absolutely fucking refuse to send letters. even when i explicitly say "i need this in writing, in hard copy. please send me a physical letter in the post via royal mail. here is my postal address in case you lost it". they'll still send it via email instead. usually as a pdf. guess i'll go the library and print it out myself.
even if i am standing at reception, they could hand me the fucking letter. does no-one have any printers? is that it?
i've noticed that a lot of people view the internet (as a sort of entity in itself) as a kind of barrier or protection from others. that this protective entity of the internet somehow makes it easier for them to communicate, or makes them feel safer because a computer can't throw acid on your face.
and, in the latter case, i fully understand.
in the former case, while i understand abstractly what they mean, i can't internally comprehend it. is it really the internet specifically that grants this improved power of communication? or do they communicate better in writing than via sound? or maybe they prefer asynchronous communication, and the format isn't too important?
i can't functionally communicate via sound. i didn't understand why until i was well into adulthood, but i have two disorders that interact terribly to make auditory communication somewhere between very difficult and outright impossible for me.
i carry a notepad and pen, and i communicate with people i'm physically standing right in front of in writing, because that's the only way i can communicate coherently.
something fascinating i've noticed is that, if i do this to someone who doesn't know me, they will almost always take the notepad and respond in writing. if i need to be directed to a certain place, after making sure i'm looking at them, they'll point me in the correct direction.
they probably assume i'm deaf, which i don't mind. it's not...technically wrong, in the sense of little-d deaf, but if they spoke while i could see their lips i'd probably be fine.
when i was a child, everyone told others i was shy. that always felt wrong, and now i know it was wrong. as a child i was, if anything, not shy enough. it just seemed to be the only word anyone knew for "doesn't speak".
i do know for a fact i prefer asynchronous communication, and it's entirely because people are so fucking impatient. i have a linguistic disorder, i need time to translate my thoughts into words, and to a lesser degree others' words into thoughts. even if i can get past my mutism, communicating physically is a struggle because people are impatient. if i don't respond instantly, they'll repeat themselves as though i didn't hear them. this forces me to once again go through the process of translating their words (they might be saying something different, i can't know if i don't understand what they're saying), and resetting my ability to think.
i've gotten into the habit of repeating "i know" breathlessly when someone is speaking something i already know. they still don't stop. they'll finish their whole auditory paragraph anyway. what's the point of live communication if people treat it as though it's asynchronous anyway? all the downsides with none of the benefits.
some people will shout at me. they will say i am ignoring them. i find their definition of "ignore" incoherent. i am literally still right here. i am still looking at you. that is the opposite of ignoring.
i won't deal with people who shout, not in any way, not for any reason.
i honestly prefer it when people assume i'm deaf and use my notebook.
Jumping on this old thread rather than creating a new topic...
What are your thoughts on having several different usernames online?
I have become gradually more involved in the indie web scene the past year and am creating new accounts here and there. I never really thought about what username to put as I have a couple of different ones and some variations of each, and now I am wondering if I somehow seem a bit - disingenuous, might be the word, when I have different usernames (maybe also different profile pics) in different forums?
In a way I feel it's nice to have different usernames to sort of divide what you share in different spaces but it might be easier to make friends online if they see you in different places? The indie web scene is quite small I guess...
it's not disingenuous. it should frankly be more normal.
this used to be completely normal. most people had a minimum of one username per fandom, and often had variations for practicality reasons anyway. your username on every site is at the mercy of whether or not it's taken, or within that site's limitations. even when i want to use the same name on multiple sites, i sometimes can't.
at this point, i think it's wise and should become standard practice to arbitrarily divide accounts across different usernames. if someone decides they want to cause you problems, it's easier for them to do so if they can find multiple accounts all belonging to you by googling the name they know you by.
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