Internet & privacy, a heteronym solution

On the internet, there is no anonimity in the legal sense. If you are some political activist, planning terror or havoc, they will get you. I have no illusions on this. Google keeps track of all my weirdest searches, ready and accessible. And a smart hacker will get me too. On the other hand, there surely are intimacy gradients. The moment I noticed that my LinkedIn profile could be googled by anyone, I destroyed it without remorse. When I judged Facebook too great a risk, I left.

So why am I then here on a blog, in open water, expressing my thoughts freely, with pictures and all? Well, on blog sites, I am all for heteronyms. Which means that I truly am Filip Fenrig. But it's not my name. And this person's thoughts will be sincere, but they can be experiments, in the sense that they result from a heteronymous side of me - a completer manifestation of an important part of me, in a way. This is simply a result of the fact that it is possible here. And between the pictures of some good things around me and in my past (all mere archaeology of the soul), you will never see a picture of myself here, nor will anyone link one... It's a small prerogative I grant myself. This I say because honesty is a good that is as valuable as privacy is.

Now, what's the fuss? Don't we all have pseudonyms? Don't we all hide behind a nickname? - Well, most of us do indeed. But a heteronym is not a pseudonym. A pseudonym is the same person behind another name. A heteronym is another person behind another name.

Okay, but don't we all modify our personality a bit behind a nick? Who expects to meet the real you or me behind a pseudonym? - Fair. But a heteronym does this methodically, as a project. It may be found remarkably true that we can get to know ourselves better by disintegrating our personality, that is, in a controlled way. In other and less catastrophic words: we can develop an important part of us in heteronymous eleboration, like children learn about themselves and society in simple role play.

For all matters regarding heteronyms, and the most interesting and most fascinating use of them, their zenith as we can say, I refer to Fernando Pessoa, who fused me into creating a blog, and who is cited, unfortunately in Dutch, in the introductory passages of this blog.

Just an experiment.