Don't Quit Facebook! Go Incognito with an Alias!
In the 80's there was an old BBS tradition of protecting your identity . . .
By never giving your real name!
by Adam Enright 
The Tradition of the Online Alias
The tradition of online Aliases is decades old. Long before Facebook, and long before the Internet, in the heady eighties, there was a rudimentary and seriously nerdy underground social networking scene called a BBS or Bulletin Board System. A BBS was hosted on a designated computer, usually a Commodore 64 or an Apple II, later on the 386, in some super-nerd's basement bedroom with a modem attached to a phone line. That nerd was the "Sysop" or Systems Operator and you had to kiss his ass because he had total control of the BBS and he decided wether you got access to his BBS or not. BBS was fringe and experimental at the time and they had great names to reflect that reality, like "PIrate's Bay BBS" or "Leather and Lace BBS" or "Dungeon of Fear BBS" and it was a dank and seedy place where you could trade pirated software, games, share rumours, teenage anger and drink deep on the dark theories of nature, society and corporations.
Of course, no one was dumb enough to use real names on a BBS. That would shatter the shady mystique. People had monikers like ANDROID-X, R_U_Nuts and Mr. Bubbles. My moniker was Cowman and my brother was Cowgod. We were not sharing information for the benefit of a corporation in another country. We were sharing messages at a few bits per second for the amusement of another mega-nerd in a basement on the other side of town. With the advent of the internet, BBS disappeared. This kind of communication moved into the world of IRC (internet relay chat) online forums and chat rooms. Once the internet became completely ubiquitous however, there seemed to be a clear and steady trend in mainstream users towards using real names and divulging real info at every available opportunity. This is really frightening!
When Facebook first came online, people flocked to it like pigeons to a greasy hot dog stand. Having your rights to privacy removed was not just for convicts and folks living under totalitarian governments anymore . . . It became fashionable for everyone to waive their privacy rights! Then furor erupted with the revelation that Facebook, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars building up the site, was now misusing and marketing the personal information of their users to advertisers and anyone else who would pony up an appropriate wheelbarrow of filthy greenbacks. Users were told at first their information was safe and sound (oh, really!) with Facebook like it was some sort of personal priest in a confessional, a camp counsellor, or a lawyer on retainer. Then one stormy night, they find out their buddy Facebook went and changed the rules and began to drunkenly blab their secrets all over town. The techniques Facebook employed led users to reveal more information about themselves than any corporation or government agency has ever been able to glean by traditional means . . . like espionage, intimidation, seduction, pay-outs or interrogation. Facebook stands accused of using the guise of being a friendly neighbourhood go-between helping grandma see pictures of the grandkids and share cookie recipes, then shoving her into a mud with no provocation and marketing photo paper and baking goods to her when she is the most vulnerable.
Sounds reprehensible! The corporation was faced with storing millions of gigabytes worth of material from individuals who voluntarily trumpeted all of their personal information, secrets, and a mug shot . . . make that 324 mug shots . . . and wedding photos . . . and blood types . . . and every other little facet of their day-to-day lives. Old Joe Stalin collected warehouses of information on his citizens, yet he never expected to make a profit off of it! Nor has the CIA, Scotland Yard or CSIS ever managed to sell their data vaults to Nabisco and General Electric! Facebook should have just sat on all of that mountain of data like a good friend should. Oh, ya, it is a corporation.
The outrage on Facebook is palpable. Users feel violated and spied upon and are writing angry responses on Facebook against Facebook and have made over ten clubs on Facebook denouncing Facebook in forums of likeminded Facebook users where people can express all of their dismay against Facebook on Facebook. Some have made forums on Facebook to state demands and ultimatums to Facebook. There was even a campaign, "Quit Facebook Day" that promoted deactivating your profile to begin shovelling all your personal information at Twitter, Yahoo, Google and Myspace instead. There was even a boycott on bookstores just in case they have something to to with Facebook.
Unfortunately, you may not know this . . . but when you deactivate your account, it stays there, waiting patiently like a cold robotic spider on a web woven in your likeness. Your profile, photos, birth date, phone number, social insurance number, dental record, x-rays, fingerprints, last will and testament, secret fears and phobias . . . it all just sits there waiting for you. It will wait like that in suspended animation for years until you give up and sign in again. Your online self will continue being seen and interacting on the web like a mannequin set adrift at sea. You may be perceived as cold and disinterested to friends and neighbours. They may even try poking your floating profile to see if you are still alive. Even if you never sign in again, this is a valuable tidbit of information for Facebook to digest. You are put on a list of known social delinquents and sent special marketing like subscription offers from the Al Gore Quarterly Review. What choice do you have but to give in? If you ever want to see pictures of your grandkids again or you ever want to receive another party invitation, you have to be on Facebook, even if it requires you to wave all of your rights and freedoms! Face it: you have to just live with Facebook and all the rule changes, underhanded marketing, trickery, overt espionage, alleyway beatings, and anything else they pull out of their sleeves in the future . . . because even if you aren't on Facebook, you're on Facebook . . .
If at this moment you are not a member, you really are deep down, you just don't know that yet. It is because a little Facebook exists in all of us, and needs a little encouragement to come out. Like it or not, the goal of Facebook is not only to have every single human being on the planet signed up for Facebook, the stated goal of Facebook is to have every single living organism on the planet on Facebook. My dog has a profile. By this time a decade from now, the petunias on your stoop will have profiles. Oxygen will be doled out to you based on how much information you divulge.
But! There is a way to continue enjoying the benefits of Social Networking without jeopardizing your identity and bringing about this Right-Wing Orwellian New World Order. There is a way to be on Facebook without sacrificing all of your rights and freedoms. This is how: Create an Online Facebook Alias!
#1: Tell all of your friends you are deactivating your account and creating a new Facebook account, under a funny, loveable Alias! Don't forget to reveal a name hint or a few personality traits of your new persona for your friends to look out for!
#2: Create your new persona! Upload a goofy pic and fill in all the info slots with bogus information! Does Facebook really know or care one way or another if you lie and say you are a Pakistani shepherd, a devout Fruitarian, and you were born in 1927? Then vow never gain to divulge any real info about yourself! It works at the mall when you give bogus info on a little card to get that free AM/FM radio, it works when you give bogus info to a telemarketer or on a marketing survey. It will work here, too.
#3: Go ahead and "Friend" all of your old friends again! Encourage them all to do the same!
When I first signed up for Facebook, I naturally used an alias:
Soon, I was friended by dozens of other people using aliases as well. Turned out, there was a whole underground movement on Facebook to create funny online presences. But these were not bad people with sketchy pasts and things to hide. They were simply good citizens using a creative and playful way to enjoy social networking sites without voluntarily participating in giving away all of their info. It is fun and exciting in a way that Facebook never intended. Facebook is happy, it has lots of traffic and it is still gleaning new information from what you post. It does not care if the information it is packaging up and selling to advertisers is 100% accurate. Your little rubber frog is a living, breathing consumer as far as they are concerned. There is a Bonnie and Clyde aspect to the experience: if one of the Facebook flying monkeys find out you are an imposter, they deactivate your account with no warning or appeal! You just try finding a 1-800 number for the Facebook flying monkeys that patrol the web . . . It is really hard!
So if you feel concerned about your privacy but want to continue enjoying Facebook, feel free to create an online alias and you'll find it even more fun to waist your time!
More From Adam Enright:
The end of the World as we Know it . . . Again
