What is your real name? That?s my new favorite comment on TechCrunch, where many of its readers hide behind phony names and email addresses. Apparently it?s not considered appropriate to challenge such geniuses about their real identity. Could be similar to talking about ?open? and ?Web? as though they have magical properties of goodness and well-being. Or not. � Nasty comments and identity baiting are in and of themselves minor irritations, best left to swift deletes or just plain not caring. Facebook and even Twitter mostly get around this problem by requiring a registration to play along, but the earlier generation of blog posts and even RSS encourage anonymity in reading mode. No reason why we should be forced to identify ourselves in order to consume a page; the problem comes if we want to respond on a level playing field in comments. � But take ?what is your real name?? and apply it to other things besides blog posts. Say you?re in a meeting and the guy to your right has been verbose but unintelligible for over an hour. You ask: ?What is your real name?? This will be viewed as a hostile interruption if taken literally, so it?s important to smile broadly and giggle in an ?I?m laughing with you, not at you? posture. If the question is treated as a non sequitur, you need to drop the smile and look earnest with a hint of stupidity. After all, adopting comment dynamics to the real world is a complicated strategy.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/47srCLGSnBY/
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