I have a new post on Internet Evolution about the rise of Reddit in the age of Facebook and Twitter, which I'm pretty proud of. Why does Reddit, a content-sharing community with pseudonymous identities, keep rising in the face of Facebook? Because of the pseudonymous identities, I argue:
Reddit's rise is directly related to the dominance of social networks that fail to let us share online content and community in ways we need, which Reddit can better provide. Facebook is where we share limited, safe aspects of ourselves with extended family, friends, and colleagues. For that very reason, Reddit is becoming our "third place," the virtual pub where we feel freer to share aspects of ourselves that Facebook has almost totally constrained.
As I've said before, Reddit shares a lot of the best qualities of Second Life, just as a more accessible, web-based virtual community. (And has a pretty active SL sub-community of its own.) Hope you give it a read and even better, create an Internet Evolution account and jump into the conversation there.
I wrote just last week on my own blog about how I think pseudonyms are more 'real' for us than birth certificate names.
With your 'birther name' - the one on your ID, you're constrained to the limits of your physical reality. Class, gender, age, geography, politics, family, peer, and work social pressures, oppressive government pressures (lets face it, the Arab spring would have gotten 3 feet out the door and hit a bullet if not for anonymity), and so on.
Pseudonyms let us express ourselves how we truly feel on the inside; it allows us to be 'free of the shackles that bind us into conformity with the dictates of Babylon.' :D
Pseudonyms today in 2012 freak out the powers that be as much as 'freedom of the press' did the powers that be in the 1700s. They will kill en mass to stop this, if they can get away with it.
They've learned in much of the world to live with a free press - because they learned the tool of propaganda. A free press today is the tool of repression. Its Ann Marie's cake, its the card up a magician's sleeve. It just dupes us into thinking our ideas and actions are ours while we play along with the dictates of our oppressors.
But pseudonyms are the free press of the modern age. They allow us to escape Babylon. Under a pseudonym you can work to form a solidified identity, one that in time becomes a compilation of your true inner nature.
This is why we become so attached to them. If pseudonyms really were just throw away handles use to harass and speak with impunity - they wouldn't matter. We could get them and toss them at leisure.
But as people form a sense of self around them, they find, even if without awareness of it, that this new identity is more them than the identity they are forced into when 'logged off'.
- This is why things like Reddit are the real future. They unshackle the human mass-consciousness, whereas something like Facebook shackles it back down.
Reddit is doomed if the powers-that-be get their hands on controlling it, but Facebook is doomed if they don't.
(and I think I'm going to have to save this one on my blog as well.)
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Monday, January 30, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Why include Twitter in the title? Since when do you need a real name or identity to be on Twitter?
Also, Reddit is just a Digg ripoff, and to be honest, not many sites turn me off based on their design and interface, but I tell you, reddit is awful. Disgusting design, hard to read, hard to navigate.. sorry, just a terrible experience IMO.
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Monday, January 30, 2012 at 03:22 PM
I took him as speaking from a larger sense of social conversation sites that allow pseudonyms versus those that don't. Since I don't even have twitter / facebook for my RL self, didn't personally realize twitter falls in the camp with reddit and not with facebook. :D
That explains why twitter was more useful in the Iranian protests than facebook...
A post on Facebook gets you carried off in the middle of the night by the goon squad in Tehran, a post on Twitter and you've got a chance.
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Monday, January 30, 2012 at 05:02 PM
"Why include Twitter in the title?"
Good point. In the article, I actually mention Twitter's pseudonymity as a virtue, but add it's limited by its architecture to work as well as Reddit. Title changed accordingly!
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Monday, January 30, 2012 at 08:11 PM