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My mom's constantly trying to get me to join Facebook so she can "keep up with me". Just today, she's tried something different. She's joined Google+ and invited me to join as well. It took me a minute and a quick search to remember what Google+ was and why I quickly undid my account with them when they automatically signed me up because I use gmail and then got lost in, you know, rereading about the whole nymwars in general.
Honestly, I'm still a little ticked at Google for the whole "your YouTube account name must match the name you used when setting up your gmail account tee-hee!", although they earned a few points back for asking why I didn't want to change it right then and there (even if they didn't offer my reasoning as one of the options, so I had to choose "other") and in the end not actually changing it at all. Not enough to make up for the points they lost for making me panic at all and checking that I didn't actually have my legal name on my gmail account info. (I don't, by the way. I signed up as Nike Victory. Which explains why my brother-in-law asked who the hell I was the first time I replied to one of the emails my sister sends. :D)
Anyways, some of the conversations I didn't stumble across the first time around on the nymwars has been rather enlightening on why I'm the way I am. I was born in the early 80s and like many kids born around this time, my first introduction to the internet came with the constantly reinforced caveat that if you went online, you didn't give your RL info to anybody. This was not only reinforced by all the computer classes I took in school, but later on when I met people who had a very good reason to separate their online and offline identities (*waves* You know who are). I am, as a result, next to impossible to find online if I don't personally clue you in. And not just my real name, either (Google search only finds one thing that's actually me, and it dates back to when I was in high school). Nike is, of course, incredibly common. Nkvictory, which I use on sites I can't use Nike or Nike Victory, is, oddly enough, also the name of a common type of rapeseed (canola, for the Americans in the audience). Nike Victory only brings up my DeviantArt account, and since I haven't attached that to anything, it can easily be mistaken as belonging to the person who's Nike Victory on Twitter (who is very obviously not me, considering they also have their "real name" attached).
My brothers, despite not being that much younger than me, didn't take the computer classes offered at my school (because the idiot doing the scheduling scheduled it at the same time as FFA, because of course the Future Farmers of America don't need to know how to work a computer *rolls eyes*). Mom, likewise, didn't have internet access until she divorced my Dad and moved to a much less rural area. The end result is that Mom and my brothers discovered the internet at their own, unsupervised, pace right about the time Facebook was coming out and revolutionizing ideas about anonymity. The end result? They don't understand that, like many people my age, I have a mild panic attack when asked for personal information online and look at any site that frowns upon pseudonyms with great suspicion.
Dad's the closest to understanding my gut reaction - I still don't have an email address for him, despite the fact I know he now has internet access - and probably why my brothers don't bother me much about social networking. Mom, who has no desire to keep in touch with Dad, doesn't get it at all. Even then, it wouldn't be so bad if my gut reaction to her wasn't, "I love you, but I don't want you in my safe spaces" so I can't even bring myself to point out alternatives to the type of sites I'll never join.
I don't think it would even do any good in the long run. Heck, you guys know me. Even at my most active, I don't tend to post a lot. You guys don't need to know when I'm going to the bathroom (unless I'm in a chat session with you, and even then it's more brb than anything detailed). Mom doesn't need to know I sometimes write porn. And someday she's just going to have to accept that I'm not going to join Facebook or Google+ and face the fact that I'm just not that chatty.
Honestly, I'm still a little ticked at Google for the whole "your YouTube account name must match the name you used when setting up your gmail account tee-hee!", although they earned a few points back for asking why I didn't want to change it right then and there (even if they didn't offer my reasoning as one of the options, so I had to choose "other") and in the end not actually changing it at all. Not enough to make up for the points they lost for making me panic at all and checking that I didn't actually have my legal name on my gmail account info. (I don't, by the way. I signed up as Nike Victory. Which explains why my brother-in-law asked who the hell I was the first time I replied to one of the emails my sister sends. :D)
Anyways, some of the conversations I didn't stumble across the first time around on the nymwars has been rather enlightening on why I'm the way I am. I was born in the early 80s and like many kids born around this time, my first introduction to the internet came with the constantly reinforced caveat that if you went online, you didn't give your RL info to anybody. This was not only reinforced by all the computer classes I took in school, but later on when I met people who had a very good reason to separate their online and offline identities (*waves* You know who are). I am, as a result, next to impossible to find online if I don't personally clue you in. And not just my real name, either (Google search only finds one thing that's actually me, and it dates back to when I was in high school). Nike is, of course, incredibly common. Nkvictory, which I use on sites I can't use Nike or Nike Victory, is, oddly enough, also the name of a common type of rapeseed (canola, for the Americans in the audience). Nike Victory only brings up my DeviantArt account, and since I haven't attached that to anything, it can easily be mistaken as belonging to the person who's Nike Victory on Twitter (who is very obviously not me, considering they also have their "real name" attached).
My brothers, despite not being that much younger than me, didn't take the computer classes offered at my school (because the idiot doing the scheduling scheduled it at the same time as FFA, because of course the Future Farmers of America don't need to know how to work a computer *rolls eyes*). Mom, likewise, didn't have internet access until she divorced my Dad and moved to a much less rural area. The end result is that Mom and my brothers discovered the internet at their own, unsupervised, pace right about the time Facebook was coming out and revolutionizing ideas about anonymity. The end result? They don't understand that, like many people my age, I have a mild panic attack when asked for personal information online and look at any site that frowns upon pseudonyms with great suspicion.
Dad's the closest to understanding my gut reaction - I still don't have an email address for him, despite the fact I know he now has internet access - and probably why my brothers don't bother me much about social networking. Mom, who has no desire to keep in touch with Dad, doesn't get it at all. Even then, it wouldn't be so bad if my gut reaction to her wasn't, "I love you, but I don't want you in my safe spaces" so I can't even bring myself to point out alternatives to the type of sites I'll never join.
I don't think it would even do any good in the long run. Heck, you guys know me. Even at my most active, I don't tend to post a lot. You guys don't need to know when I'm going to the bathroom (unless I'm in a chat session with you, and even then it's more brb than anything detailed). Mom doesn't need to know I sometimes write porn. And someday she's just going to have to accept that I'm not going to join Facebook or Google+ and face the fact that I'm just not that chatty.
