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How I know I'm old
It makes me unspeakably uncomfortable when online services such as Facebook or Yahoo request my full name, birthday, etc as a requirement for using their services. I can't recall at the moment if LiveJournal wanted all that stuff from me when I signed up or not. It's probable that they did.
The idea of posting actual pictures of myself online sort of squicks me out. This is part of why I have no LJ icons (the other part is that I just am not very visually motivated... odd in someone who loves comic books, but I actually struggle to understand the visual content in comics - I'm often oblivious to whole masses of panels until a second read-through, which is part of the appeal for me). The other reason I have no LJ icons is of course laziness.
So I'm not very old, and I've been hanging out in online places for over a decade, but maybe because my early experiences were in password protected chat rooms where no one used their real names, the whole openness of the modern digital world is hard for me to wrap my head around. The idea of creating a permanent record that anyone can read, that's linked to your real name and your real picture is a bit scary for me. I often find that it takes two or three tries for me to go through signing up for a new digital account. I get halfway through and I think "you want WHAT information?" and I delete it all and back out and clear my cache and cookies like someone afraid of a digital monster hiding in the internet. I don't know why I have this visceral reaction, and I don't know if it would be different if the folks who introduced me to my active internet use hadn't been wannabe hacker/script-kiddies who were on the internet using illegal accounts they bought using various definitely illegal dodges (I'm sure those folks had a HIGH motivation for not tying their real identities too tightly to their online identities). It's odd because in my workplace I come across as a "with-it" digitally-aware sort of person - which I think is pretty darn far from the truth.
Of course, a lot of the groups that come across as less intrusive (professional listservs, college sites) are not any less intrusive - it's just that they don't need to collect that information from you actively since they already have it. All my alma mater needs to tie my posts/pics to a host of private info about me is the email they supplied, without which I can't use their other services.
The idea of posting actual pictures of myself online sort of squicks me out. This is part of why I have no LJ icons (the other part is that I just am not very visually motivated... odd in someone who loves comic books, but I actually struggle to understand the visual content in comics - I'm often oblivious to whole masses of panels until a second read-through, which is part of the appeal for me). The other reason I have no LJ icons is of course laziness.
So I'm not very old, and I've been hanging out in online places for over a decade, but maybe because my early experiences were in password protected chat rooms where no one used their real names, the whole openness of the modern digital world is hard for me to wrap my head around. The idea of creating a permanent record that anyone can read, that's linked to your real name and your real picture is a bit scary for me. I often find that it takes two or three tries for me to go through signing up for a new digital account. I get halfway through and I think "you want WHAT information?" and I delete it all and back out and clear my cache and cookies like someone afraid of a digital monster hiding in the internet. I don't know why I have this visceral reaction, and I don't know if it would be different if the folks who introduced me to my active internet use hadn't been wannabe hacker/script-kiddies who were on the internet using illegal accounts they bought using various definitely illegal dodges (I'm sure those folks had a HIGH motivation for not tying their real identities too tightly to their online identities). It's odd because in my workplace I come across as a "with-it" digitally-aware sort of person - which I think is pretty darn far from the truth.
Of course, a lot of the groups that come across as less intrusive (professional listservs, college sites) are not any less intrusive - it's just that they don't need to collect that information from you actively since they already have it. All my alma mater needs to tie my posts/pics to a host of private info about me is the email they supplied, without which I can't use their other services.