Aliases

Recently I've been watching all of Heroes and it's got me thinking about a lot of things.  Watching people come to terms with who they are within extraordinary circumstances, trying to hide who they really are from the rest of the world...it's amazing how they do it.  It's especially interesting in Clair Bennet's case.  She has one of the easiest to hide powers, and yet she wants to know about all the things she can do that she secretly pushes herself forward, challenging where they can take her.  But in doing so, she has to work harder to hide who she is.  As the series progresses, she changes her name, then changes it back in season four, stating that she just wants to be herself.  That's what really got me thinking.  Names.  What do they mean?  Why do people express so much of a need to have a name for everything?

Look at the internet, and how people hide who they really are underneath monikers and avatars.  I'm no exception.  As I said in the first post I retired my old moniker and opted to put everything under my real name.  And after two weeks, I've noticed something.  There are several times when I've wanted to post a comment on YouTube or a few other sites, and as I was writing it, I changed how I worded a few things because I was under full transparency.  Anyone that read my comment could see my full name, much as you can now.  I wouldn't call it censoring, but I reread the comment, then changes a word or two because I didn't want it to be construed in a certain way, even if the change created a slightly different tone to how I really felt.

I remember when there was so much controversy over the internet being full open and anonymous.  People strive for anonymity on the internet.  Some people use names that mean something to them, while others use names that have no meaning due to their complete overuse.  For instance, one of my favorite names to make fun of is anyone that uses Sephiroth.  For those that don't know, Sephiroth is a character from Final Fantasy VII, namely the evil character.  No matter what website I go to, or even character names used in MMORPGs, I see so many Sephiroth#### out there.  It's absurd.  It's one thing to use a name that has meaning, but when that name becomes basically a John Smith of the internet, there is something wrong.  Even those people that use the same name as celebrities, or creating various statements such as IEatSouls (I've seen even worse ones that make me question the morals and motives of the person behind them).  Names, even ones used on the internet, shouldn't be something so transparent or uncreative.  It's why I spent so much time coming up and keeping my moniker of old.  It was something that no matter where I went, no one else would have that name.  Yet, it also meant that if someone wanted to see everything I was associated with, they could simple search that and would be able to find my email, my Facebook...everything.  I actually had this happen.  Someone I had met in Minecraft that only knew me by my gamertag found me on Facebook by simply searching that and adding common emails at the end.

But I'm getting off topic here (It's a rant...it's supposed to get off topic and take the winding path).  Back to talking about aliases.  My old moniker had it's own personality.  It wasn't drastically different than my own personality, but it was just different enough to be called its own person.  Even using my nickname brings with it a slightly different set of personality traits when I'm around the people that call me by that name solely as to people that call me by my actual name.  It's why I wanted to remove myself from at least my online moniker.  I wanted to be more myself.  I wanted to express myself without people looking at my name and thinking I was some teenage kid hiding behind a wall to separate myself from any backlash.

So the point I'm trying to make is that if you hide behind an alias online, or even in real life, think about who you are.  Do you keep that name just because you think it's cool, or is it a wall that gives you a little buffer room in case something you say or do with it backfires?  And is that name something that still applies to you?  Perhaps you no longer have need for it, but keep it around because you are still afraid or want to hold onto that little part of your life that once was.

With that said, I would like to invite people to create a conversation below on this topic.  Use whatever name you want.  How and why did you come up with that name, or any other name you want to talk about.  When you think about it, and I mean really think about it, you may find that you can't justify it's existence anymore.  Remember your Shakespeare.  "What is in a name?"