Pseudonymity Quotes

In January 2012, Google Plus started to roll out support for nicknames and pseudonyms, but those registering with a name other than their real-life one must be able to prove that they have been using that alternative name elsewhere, either on the Web or in real life.

And I can't think of a reason I'd ever use a pseudonym, as I wouldn't want to publish something that I didn't like enough to put my name on it.

The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.

When Facebook was getting started, nothing used real identity - everything was anonymous or pseudonymous - and I thought that real identity should play a bigger part than it did.

It is hard to violate somebody's privacy if the person is completely anonymous.

As the writer of a pseudonymous book, I gave up my own accumulated history as a novelist and became what I had been as a child: unnamed, unidentified, unacknowledged. Invisible. In a very real sense, what I hope for in the process of imagining a book is to disappear.

The idea that you can be totally anonymous in the digital age is increasingly hard to execute.

I've learnt that it's possible to be as anonymous as you want. It's a choice, and I've become very, very good at being anonymous.

I kind of wish people didn’t know who I am, that I could just lie, say I’m a speechwriter for Obama. This is what I said before Twilight. And then Obama came along and picked up all these young writers. I found out this guy, Jon Favreau — who’s not the actor Jon Favreau — is writing for him. And I was like, Wow, I wonder if the people who thought I was bullshitting at the time are like, ‘Oh my god. That guy! That kid who was drunk in some bar actually wrote the health care bill!’

When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.

The problem of online identity is expressed best in an old 'New Yorker' cartoon with a picture of a dog next to a computer, and the dog says, 'No one online knows you're a dog.'

It becomes dangerous for somebody who doesn't want their boss to know their sexual preference to use online networks to push for laws supporting gay marriage or same-sex partner rights if they can't do so with a pseudonym.

I don't have a pen name, so I'm thinking of getting a doctor's name. What would you call that, a stethoscope name?

The thing that turned out to be interesting about CB radios was the ability to call out in the world with anonymity. You choose your handle. Race and class become non-signifiers.

Back in high school, there was something fun and dangerous about inhabiting a different personality.

When I started producing, I was just making music under all different names. 'Black Afro.' 'Super Grandmaster.' 'Mister Bull.' Like, the most stupid, idiotic names. 'Afrojack' was one of those idiotic names.

The idea of a pseudonym had been flitting around my brain for a long time, along with its cognate, disappearance. In the 1980s, I published some poems under a pen name in a literary magazine to see what it would feel like. It was fun. It was even a little thrilling.

There's all sorts of stuff people want to publish anonymously.

I used to enjoy the anonymity of being a literary figure and occasionally a public radio figure.

I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system.

Anonymity is an abused privilege, abused most by people who mistake vitriol for wisdom and cynicism for wit.

Reddit names are unconnected to real-world identities and it's commonplace for users to create 'throwaway' accounts to reveal sensitive information.

The decision to use a pen name was nothing more than a desire to compartmentalise my life. However, I had not thought about an appropriate pseudonym, and since there's an abundance of anagrams in the novel, the idea struck me: why not use an anagram of my name? Hence, Shawn Haigins.

I am nostalgic for those man-behind-the-curtain days when someone could get away with impersonating Kubrick because nobody had any idea what Kubrick looked like.

With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were their words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.