i don't want follower and block lists to follow me to every corner of a federated internet. i don't want a single unified profile everywhere. that sounds fuckin terrible to me actually.
but they seem so into it! they seem to think this will fix all the issues with things like twitter and meta! i do not understand why they seem to think this
every time I go on reddit or whatever and "log in with google" pops in the corner and I'm like "that is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen in this situation"
Having a unified identity across different social contexts is something that is only possible for the "in-group" of a society. Because by definition, they way that they are in private is the thing that is blessed as "acceptable" in public.
Things like Code-Switching (linguistics) and pseudonyms and, to invent a term, "partitioned identities" are survival strategies for being part of an out-group. Any out-group. Race, gender, queer, religion, all of them. The idea of safe spaces is very similar, too.
Cohesive, non-partitioned identities are privilege. Believing it's "normal" to have a single, universal, connected identity is a type of privilege. Expecting it of others (much less demanding or enforcing it) is a type of oppression.
I wrote a thing a few years ago about putting the “author” in “authoritative”. Who gets to determine what is true about us? Ourselves? Or some system outside of our control?
A lot of that post is kind of tangential to this discussion, but where I think they connect is my position that it is acceptable to lie about yourself to a system. I extend that idea here to say that it is acceptable to omit information about yourself to a system.
(Lying, by omission or otherwise, to people rather than systems can get into morally murkier territory, but in this case I still think it's acceptable. Even if leaving out parts of yourself in certain contexts weren't a necessary survival strategy, you still don't owe everybody your whole life story. You aren't obliged to share your whole self with everyone. Sometimes you just wanna keep yourself to yourself. You have that right.)
Partitioning your identity, as garak describes above, is exactly that. Maybe on LinkedIn, you leave out all the parts of yourself that aren't accepted as “professional”. Maybe there's another site where you let those flags fly but you don't mention your wallet name or your day job. This is the lying-by-omission about your identity (different omissions in each venue) that I hold is acceptable as a means of exerting control and authorship of your identity, not to mention surviving in a society that doesn't accept your whole self.
And the corollary of that idea is that it is acceptable to present different parts of yourself—and omit other parts—in different contexts. You do not have to, and should not be expected or required to, present your whole, unexpurgated self to anything or anyone.
(You can probably guess what I think of “tell us about all your social media accounts” fields on job applications and travel forms.)
The freedom to lie about yourself is the freedom to tell the truth about yourself. It is the same freedom, the freedom to tell your story as you see fit, and as much as you see fit, and as accurately as you see fit. It is your exercise of your power to determine yourself, and present yourself, and determine how (and whether) to present yourself.
It is your ownership of your truth.
Be you, where you choose to.
