In the past, the pseudonym was the shelter of clandestine writers, pamphleteers in exile, too free souls in too hard weather. He brought in him a part of mystery, a shadow of dissent and secret. The pseudonym was an art, an enigmatic signature carefully chosen, an elegant veil cast on identity. Gary became Ajar, Poquelin became Molière, Beyle became Stendhal. The pseudonym has always been a way to escape his civil identity, sometimes to protect himself, sometimes to reinvent himself, but today, on social networks, he has become an informed hood, a garish label. Elegance has given way to vulgarity, the style of brutality: from Yourcenar we went to DarkDestroyer94, Grosgamerxxl or Gugus25. The pseudo is no longer a discretion but an outlet, opening the cleared ego fair. The real world has its limits? What does it matter! Virtual space is a space where you can say everything, everything. Under a nickname, the limits vanish. The most timid of us, the one who would not dare to raise his voice in an assembly, discovers an murderous verve and an aggressiveness without brake. He who, under his real name, would weigh each word for fear of being frowned upon, lets himself go to the jubilation of hatred, of the invective which hurts, of the resentment which reassures.
The pseudonym abolishes the consequences, dissolves responsibilities and transforms any restraint into excess. The pack applauds, she who loves these anonymous gladiators who rush into the arena of the comments, from these public executions in 280 characters, of these dimbers where one exterminates a reputation of an inch-like triumphal. There is no more courage, real confrontation, direct look. Just borrowed names that were embedded, in threads infinite that each one can one day or another be prey. Thus goes our time, when pseudonymat degrades more than it mythifies. If, of course, it no longer really embellishes, it invariably reveals.
Anonymity is, paradoxically, a truth. He naked much more than he hides. Because man, as soon as he is released from the weight of his identity, becomes himself again-not the idealized man he would like to be, but the raw man, without filter, without eyeshadow, without politeness. The digital anonymous man, this gygès of modern times, is revealed in the invisibility that his nickname allows him. What he was under his real name, he writes it without shaking under a false. Anonymity is not a mask, it is a mirror. He does not hide, he shows.
What make -up identity, anonymity reveals it
Identity is a sophisticated concealment. It is believed to be faithful, but the man who speaks in his name adjusts his speech and corrects his image according to what he wishes to send back from himself. We naively believe that identity defines us, reveals us, gives us a stable and authentic reality. However, it can also be a game, a facade, a role to play and lead to a rigged life, a self -flight, when instead of being we play to be. We then believe we are building but we conform and enter identities that format us as much as they disguise: the loyal friend, the manly man, the family, the sexy woman, the authoritarian boss, the young ecological … So many roles that bring us into an identity and substitute the courage to be authentically yourself the illusory comfort of embodied a frozen image. It is to disguise his being as a parody and his conduct as a diagrams.
This loss of self is easy, because very quickly we can become conscious automata acting by conformism more than by singular will. It is so much easier to take refuge behind an archetype already written by society than to convene the singular totality of his person to venture into the free and without beacon. We believed the guaranteeing identity of truth and anonymity accomplice of lies. But it’s the opposite. In this sense, identity can move us away from ourselves, and anonymity explodes us. What make -up identity, anonymity reveals it. What identity retains, anonymity exhibits it. It is anonymity, much more than identity, which reveals what we are.
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy.
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