# initials do not make for a pseudonym
by pjvm
14-05-2022
"pjvm" is just my initials, and as a consequence I must essentially treat it as
my real name. Starting from "pjvm" it is possible to find certain other
accounts where my username contains my full last name - and for any such
account abbreviating the username yields a path back to this account - and
anyone who knows me by my full name can find this log, or make the connection
if they come across it.
In one way, I have treated it as such - I've not disclosed anything here or on
the gemini mailing list that I would want unknown to certain family members, or
an employer, or other IRL people. In another way, however, I've not been
behaving as if this gemsite is in my real name. Until now, this gemsite has not
mentioned my full name or really any other real-life information.
Part of it is that initially, I kind of did think of it as a pseudonym: this
gemsite was going to be its own thing, entirely separate from my life, and I
would primarily be writing 'antilog' posts, pieces nicely disconnected from my
personal life. But even when I realised that I cannot really use it as a
pseudonym, I still wanted to try and keep it as separate as possible, as
limited as my actual control over that might be. I wasn't comfortable with the
fact that all the accounts where I've used my name can be connected, in part
because I suspect that on some of them I've said or done things that I would
now be embarrassed about or disagree with. I also didn't want people to know my
demographic information, thinking in particular that if people knew that I'm
relatively young, they'd treat me less as an equal.
These two paradoxical lines of thinking - I can't say these things because it's
not a pseudonym, but I also can't say those things because I want it to be a
pseudonym - severely limited what I could discuss here. I started to pivot
towards discussing more actual things going on in my life, but then getting
stuck thinking about how I could anonimise them as much as possible.
No longer. From now on, I won't go out of my way to avoid connections to other
internet appearances. I'll give my surname unabbreviated and talk more about
things happening in my life.
Recently on my Github account, which is directly tied to my email address and
thus to here, I revealed that I am P. van Mill and that I'm currently writing
my bachelor's thesis. Next to my surname, my education level and a likely age
range, the other information that is out there is that I'm Dutch and a man, and
that I'm studying at the university of Maastricht.
## meaningful activities
One thing in particular that I've been wanting to discuss here is a talk that I
gave back in march. It gives an introduction to online tracking methods, using
as examples some digital invasions of privacy committed by my university. You
can view a recording of the talk on the web:
=>
https://tube.tchncs.de./w/auEwbc1T63LwudB1FLckpD (Peertube) Digital privacy
@UM: introduction to tracking methods
Of course, one goal with this is to get Maastricht University to stop what
they're doing. More importantly though, the purpose is to inform people about
tracking, how it works and what they can do to protect themselves. In the long
term, ideally speaking I would like to set up a small organisation of primarily
students, centered around digital rights and free software. Next academic year,
I'm planning to give more talks and maybe get involved in student politics.
Quite a lot of work went into the talk (and I'm still not done with it). I set
up a whole website for it - for a homemade website, I'd say the result is quite
okay. I acquired a cheap (I think it's close to the cheapest available?) VPS
for this purpose. I tried to advertise the talk using analog methods,
specifically posters, which I tried to get put up in the university buildings.
I set up a Peertube account and learned how to livestream on it - this was
surprisingly straightforward. I made a transcript of the talk, which took me
far more time than I had expected, and I still want to write a nice summary.
=>
https://umprivacy.nl.eu.org./ the website, umprivacy.nl.eu.org.
Unfortunately, the talk was a total flop, as is immediately deducible from the
current view count on the video. My extremely small-scale attempts at analog
advertising had next to no effect. I've experienced that it's very hard to get
people to pay attention to these kinds of issues, no matter how important I
might think they are. The talk itself is pretty bad - I don't have much
experience with public speaking and here it's worse than usual, with a lot of
pausing, mumbling and stumbling.
While I have portrayed it as a failure, for me personally the talk was a
success or at least a good start, and I'm very glad I did it. I want to keep
taking initiative like this and engage more and more in "meaningful activities"
and I really hope I'll be able to build on this particular initiative in the
next academic year (until the summer I'll focus on completing my thesis,
though).
Speaking of meaningful activities: as ever I think I should do more writing,
and as ever this post comes after a long period of silence. I'm hoping that now
that I've ditched the pseudo-pseudonym idea and have more to write about, I can
make writing a more frequent thing. I should keep in mind, though, that I often
underestimate the time it takes me to write a piece.
However, not all my writing will be done here. As I'm treating this as a
real-name space, I will restrict myself to the statements that will not cause
*too* much trouble with any person I (will) have to interact with in real life.
One thing that has become very clear to me is that I really want to make a lot
more use of a proper pseudonym. I already have such names, but I've stopped
using most of them for various reasons. I want to put them to use again, have a
place where I can be much more unfiltered - and by "unfiltered" I don't mean
"rude", I mean some mix of "insane" and "strongly opinionated".
I'm still figuring out where exactly I'll draw the line between things I say
under my real name and things I'll restrict to a pseudonym. Some things are
worth the trouble. But I would rather err on the side of caution.
I will also say that I regret using (part of) my real name for certain things
on the internet, including this gemsite, and my honest advice to anyone who
doesn't consider themself "old" is: when in doubt, use a pseudonym. You always
end up doing and saying some stupid stuff, which itself shouldn't be a problem,
but when it's all permanently public it is possible for all the stupid stuff
you've done and said to be collected together into one big list of mistakes.
Only start using your real name for everything when you've permanently stopped
caring what people think of you.
One other thing that I can't do as much here as I'd initially envisioned is
convince people. The thing I hate most about the current political climate
world-wide is the sheer level of polarisation, which I see - and maybe this is
unfair or inaccurate - mostly as an export product of the USA. I perceive
polarisation to be increasing and see US social media companies as largely
responsible for that - and the effects of polarisation are truly vile.
It seems to me that in the US and more and more elsewhere, there are many
people who will stop listening to you completely if they learn just one opinion
of yours, or will even stop thinking of you as a fellow human being. If I state
here that I support transgender people, just how many people will instantly
consider me not worth listening to because of that? And I'm sure that for
various groups of people, you can think of some things to say to instantly get
them to categorise you as "in the wrong camp" and therefore to be ignored or
fought.
In a highly polarised world, I think discussing important things in a way that
actually convinces people requires starting very abstractly and phrasing your
arguments in a maximally neutral way (or even in "the language of the enemy").
To convince people of anything more applied, you'd first have to talk them out
of aligning with one political party on every issue and get them to consider
ideas individually. Clearly, if I ever want to make a serious effort at
convincing those who are the most difficult to convince, I'd have to make
another pseudonym.
