[resters]

There are some of us (late generation-X / early millennial) who saw this coming and still maintain a variety of separate identities across many domains.

I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example.

Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet fame / personal branding.

[giraffe_lady]

If you keep them distinct unification is a weapon to be used against you. You're writing your own blackmail someone just has to call you on it.

With prose fingerprinting, sophisticated tracking, now your identities are only separate by rapidly eroding social convention. Intentionally merging them allows you to have control over the process, and helps you maintain discipline about what you reveal where. If you don't do it it will be done to you.

[xyzzy_plugh]

Prose fingerprinting is indeed worrisome, but it's a solvable problem once you are aware it exists. For example, if you contribute here anonymously, but don't contribute elsewhere, there is no corpus that can produce an accurate match.

Many people communicate differently in different contexts. It's common to try and match the style of the community in which you participate.

I am not convinced that having your identities merged for you is inevitable.

[meowkit]

Its inevitable because of capital incentives.

Someone makes money identifying you and selling that data to advertisers.

If your pseudonym is famous/infamous someone makes money / cultivates attention if they identify you.

There is a basic instinct to uncover the unknown.

Unless the above systems are disabled then the drive to unify identity will be ceaseless.

[tjoff]

Parasitic advertisement is not a basic instinct.

[resters]

How is merging identities the solution?

The goal is not "how can I do blackmail-worthy activities without being blackmailed?" the goal is "how can I participate in a narrow way without, for example, having those reading my content biased by my LinkedIn profile or my corporate affiliation?"

We don't walk around wearing little badges that identify every organization we affiliate with, every group, etc. Why would anyone want their online participation burdened by all that extra (usually irrelevant) information?

In my case, I don't write content I would worry about some determined prose fingerprinter finding, and if I did I would sanitize the prose first :)

[readthenotes1]

Orson Scott Card saw this coming last century and wrote of a character who maintained 2 online personas who became the thought leaders of opposing groups.

Some of the late gen-x/millennials who saw this coming may have been inspired to read Endor's Game after seeing the movie

[maheshbansod]

in Ender's Game, the two leaders of the opposing groups are actually separate characters (the siblings of the main character).

[inigyou]

His name was Ender - deliberately, as in Finisher, Destroyer, Finaliser - not Endor

[astrobe_]

Even earlier than that. "Pseudonymity" (not using your real name online) were adopted very early on Internet. Facebook is the big exception.

This first claim seems weak to me, and the arguments made in TFA are generally weak IMO. It feels that this theory tries to "eat more than it can chew"; they try to explain a lot of things with a single hypothesis, which in the end yields unconvincing explanations.

For instance, let me answer the 4 opening questions:

Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks all the time?

Because fear sells; but that aside, one can also say that we are a species who loves solving problems, and pointing them is generally the first step to a solution.

Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction and managing our attention?

Because something is aggressively trying to steal attention - that is, actually, time - from us. It's self-defence at this point.

Why is it so hard to stop comparing ourselves to others?

Because of the atavistic instinct of reproduction, in which mating partners are selected mainly based on social status. It takes training to go against this instinct, and it is even more difficult when your time is being stolen.

And why does everything in art and design seem the same these days?

That's something a boomer could say... Mainstream designs can, maybe, look similar because when you target a large market you design for the average taste. Non-mainstream designs are just more expensive, harder to find, and less visible.

[thomastjeffery]

Unfortunately that isn't a solution. When you keep separate identities, the only thing that can exist across platforms is your own participation. Everything you say and do is isolated to whichever identity and platform you are using in that moment. You still don't have the opportunity to exist completely, because your self has been fragmented. Even if you did manage to create a cross-platform identity, the product of your participation is fragmented, and every story you tell is objective to that platform's context. Even if you tell a story that links across platforms, you are still isolated to that specific cross-platform context.

[dontwannahearit]

I think this misses the point. As the article points out, people could and would act differently in different contexts: Home, the Church, the Bar. They weren't lacking opportunity to "exist completely".

The whole point of the omni-context is that you are putting yourself in a space where you have to act in a way that is appropriate to all of those places.

I would say things in the Bar that I would not want the reverend, my grandmother or my children to hear - but in the uni-context I have to mediate my speech to what is appropriate to all of those audiences or risk judgement for it.

The uni-context discourages expression. It's like a dystopia where everything you say and do is recorded and can be recalled for judgement at any time. And yet people sign up for it.

Trying to maintain separate context, different identities across platforms is an attempt to fight against that and to limit the risk that something I say on one plaform is not going to destroy my social credit in every other platform where I participate.

[thomastjeffery]

Yes, but the context itself is still omnipotent to everyone who participates with it. It's not a bar if it's everywhere. Wearing a mask to the everybar is a way to compensate for the fact you can't leave. You must fragment your self to compensate for the global scope of the bar, just like using a struct to reinvent lexical scope in a globally scoped program. The problem isn't really solved, it's just semantically moved.

What we are really missing is the ability for expression to be subjective by default. When we participate in socially global contexts, everything we read and write must be coherent to the generalized expectations of the entire group of people who are participating in that context. Instead of your words being taken out of context, they are constantly assumed into the context, implying your own interpretation is objectively wrong. The meaning of every expression is decided and relevant, even when it shouldn't be.

[Avicebron]

> The uni-context discourages expression. It's like a dystopia where everything you say and do is recorded and can be recalled for judgement at any time. And yet people sign up for it.

It's a panopticon, where we self-censor because we fear unknown future reprisals. Did we really sign up for it? Or has Our (collective our) ability to reason and push back against it been curtailed by financial incentives to build it?

[astrobe_]

> your self has been fragmented

Unless you are more after acknowledgement than sharing/helping others (and be on the receiving end sometimes), this is non-problem.

[thomastjeffery]

Maybe not to your self, but it has a significant effect on the actual interactions you have.

[inigyou]

it's a huge mental/emotional burden actually. It's really not good for your soul.

[pluralmonad]

I think this is one reason online anonymity is so important for some of us. It is the thing that let's us tamp down the great unification, at least a little.

[jt2190]

> … internet fame / personal branding.

Also known as “social proof”/“social credibility”, and it’s a common mistake to assume it has no value whatsoever.

[resters]

Does it really matter that a review was written by "Ronald B Smith" vs "BrewersFan4000"?

I'd argue that it only matters when the goal is to convert "real name" accounts into something that is effectively merged with an Experian soft credit score, Google supercookie-powered profile, etc.

[ekabod]

The article explains the distinction between identity and character. You are talking about character.

[Supermancho]

I think that distinction is fuzzier. My ssh key is one identity. My Social Security number is another.

[MithrilTuxedo]

I'm not a neurotypical xenial, but I wasn't any good at compartmentalizing, or when I tried maintaining different identities it didn't feel honest, like I was pretending. I didn't like the thought of anyone ever seeing sides of me that were inconsistent with each other.