There were a couple of news items recently that were in the vein of people rioting at the thought of losing their internet secrecy. One was pointed out to me by one of you faithful readers (Hi Roy!), a story about the harassment a female gamer receives if the nerds she games with find out her real name. To me,this actually supports my belief in online identification. If the lonely stalkers were held accountable to what they were doing, held to the same standards and rules that a real world stalker would, the incidents of harassment would drop dramatically. They are hiding behind a convenient fallacy that things on the internet aren’t really real, so they can do normally reprehensible things without feeling guilty.
The other story was Blizzard trying to introduce real names into their Warcraft forums. Again, I think this would eliminate the majority of the bloated nonsense that clutters the web. The players can maintain their escapism into an alternate identity within the game, but forums are public areas where real people interact.
On the parenting front, Max’s sleep pattern has become unstable again,so we’re running on low sleep juice for everyone. Things I lose when I’m tired: the ability to make an omelette, and the capacity to fully follow a recipe. Thankfully, the family likes my hot egg messes, and forgetting the olive oil in homemade hummus makes it ‘low fat’. Ta da!
Chris Loblaw, Author 