Blog Stuff: Anonyblogging.

The chatter on the virtues and vices of anonymous blogging is going strong over at Say Uncle. Some folks seem to get pretty spun up over the fact that any human with a keyboard and a 'net connection can speak their mind without having to show their ID. The less tightly-wrapped more vocal critics even wax hyperbolic with comparisons of anonymous bloggers to everyone's current favorite bogieman, terrorists.

How exactly making snarky comments about someone online is the moral equivalent of donning a Semtex sweater before heading to the mall is a point that eludes me, but then, many viewpoints enthusiastically embraced by the perpetually high-strung manage to escape my comprehension.

For myself, the use of my real name on the 'net isn't due to some vague commitment to uprightness or John Hancock-like urge to be identified with a certain stance, but rather due to a spectacular lack of creativity when I signed up at GlockTalk back in '99. Wanting to ask a question, I needed to register to do so, and was in too much of a hurry to come up with a clever screen name (in retrospect, I wish I'd used "Auntie Tank".) One thing led to another, and I just started to use my real name on all the forums I belonged to, merely refraining from using my last name as a fig-leaf of stalker-conscious 21st Century sensibility. Of course, that precaution is kind of a joke, since the address of my workplace is one click away from my blog or BBS sigline.

Potential stalkers should, however, take note of the fact that the aforementioned workplace is, in fact, a gun store.