Why We Created NymRights
Just over two years ago, during the summer of 2011, Google unveiled their new service, Google Plus. It was a breathtaking work of engineering, and rescued many of us from the grips of Facebook. Until, that is, they started suspending people for names that didn’t look “real” enough. This enraged many communities, and turned into the battle that became known as “nymwars.”
Nymwars launched a series of discussions that have continued to this day. However, the notion of nym-wars conjures many images people consider negative: war, fighting, battle, and creates a general mood of anxiety and negativity. We realized that, because names are a very personal, intimate element of who we are, it made more sense to re-cast the discussion as positive and enabling. Thus, “NymRights” was born.
What is a “nym”?
Before addressing the larger climate, I think it’s important to explore the general perception of what a “nym” is, and what we believe they are. Most of the discussion I have seen revolves around “real names” versus “nyms”, which I think is unfortunate, because it usually conflates the notion of “legal” name with “real” name, and creates a dualistic hierarchy of real vs fake. It’s more accurate to depict names as labels which identify people (or things) within a given context.
Names are a very transient concept: often we’ll have a base name (like “John”) and deviate from it a bit in different settings (“John” becomes “Jack”). Some people acquire new names to mark rites of passage— Pope Francis, for example. Sometimes they use stage names, such as Lady Gaga. Sometimes they have a base name, and the additional name is a pseudonym, but sometimes the two names exist in equal standing. Would anyone suggest that Pope Francis is using the name to try to “hide” his “real” identity?
In that sense, I feel a “nym” is a more exact way to define names. You can have a polynym, like “John Smith”, or a mononym, simply “John.” It’s actually difficult to place an objective definition on what a “nym” is, so in the info card I created for NymRights, I left that to the Twitterverse collective.
Two Names? Why would someone need more than one?
You could flip this question around and ask “why should someone be limited to only one name?” The answers I’ve come up with aren’t pretty, and usually represent something opposing the individual. In general, we all live in different contexts, and occupy different roles in those contexts. Maybe you’re a schoolteacher and your students call you “Mr. Smith.” Or maybe you’re a student and everyone calls you “Johnny.” Most people have multiple email addresses, one for personal and one for professional. Even if you’re not doing anything nefarious, do your coworkers really want to be pelted with emails about your kids’ soccer practice?
But then there is the cost element. While some people, myself included, enjoy the privilege of choosing to exist in separate contexts, for others it’s a necessity. There are many, many examples of teachers being fired because someone discovered they used to make porn. There was even a recent case where students hacked a teachers laptop to change their grades; they hacked her boyfriend’s laptop by accident, found private photos of her, and posted them to Facebook. You can guess what happened next.
There are less socially taboo examples, such as the person who wants to make political statements that their company doesn’t agree with. Or a teenager who wants to talk to someone anonymously about the possibility he might be gay. Or the person who put a criminal in jail, and now they have to keep a new profile in case the criminal is released. Or the child who wants protection from online predators. The list goes on and on.
The ultimate question is, should someone be able to decide how they are identified in a context, and whether that method of identification persists across contexts. The answer is, it depends. If we’re pulled over by a police officer, in that context we must identify myself as the law requires (usually with a government ID). However, depending on the state (or country), we can often change what appears on that ID— for example, a woman who gets married and changes her name legally. The second part is trickier: if I’m at a club and a random person asks who I am, do I need to give them my government issued ID? Probably not, unless they are a security guard checking my age.
Wow, this is complex! How does this work online?
At the moment, it really doesn’t. We’re at a strange junction where, thanks to companies like Facebook and Google, technology has become accessible to a lot more people. Whenever a new group forms, people join with preconceptions of how things work, and their initial and subsequent relationships depend on those preconceptions and how they are able to coexist with everyone else. The larger the group, the harder this is.
Think of the first day of class, where we are learning our bearings: getting to know the teacher, knowing who else is in the class, where they sit, what their likely role is (teachers pet?), and so on. As the class goes on, the situation changes, as do we. At the moment, we’re in a giant classroom with millions of people in it. The challenge is, everyone is fighting to be the teacher, and nobody knows where anyone else is sitting. Some people want to be the teacher, others don’t think we need a teacher at all. However, as the lessons in school teach us how to speak, think, and interact, so will the digital structures we use.
As this chaos continues, companies like Facebook and Google have moved into a space where they can assume the role of teacher: they offer simple and attractive services that allow us to quickly communicate, often so enamored with the technology that we overlook the implicit dangers; similar to how when we start dating someone, we can overlook their flaws for a long time. However, with pivotal moments such as nymwars, that honeymoon is ending and we’re beginning to see some cracks forming on that image.
Wrapping up
Now we can ask important questions: Do we want Google and Facebook to be the arbiters of free speech, and of what names should be like? What do I have to win or lose from putting my trust in them? And how did they craft their policies, anyway? Will we be better off as a society if we allow their procedures (and biases) to mediate our online expression?
It’s worth noting that a lot of adopters of technology are young (under 25). We tend to refer to them collectively as either the Google generation or the Millennials. They are the folks for whom the Beloit Mindset lists are going to start to really scare the older generation. Is it a good or bad thing? I think it simply is. Keeping in mind that, while, according to those like Ed Bernays, people are sheep who are easily manipulated, we also have a collective knack for survival of culture. I think we’re still in the process of defining who we are,and how our self-identification changes with this technology. As Cory Doctorow said in one of his talks, we really don’t have a lot of collective vocabulary yet. Let’s change that.
aestetix
