2007-11-28

A Blogger's Guide to Delaying Discovery of Your Secret Identity

If you write an interesting pseudonymous blog, people will be curious about who you really are. Although they wish you no harm, many will treat finding your secret identity like a fun puzzle to solve. If they meet someone you work with, they won't be able to stop themselves from saying something like, "do you work with a curly-haired woman who went to Queens and recently adopted a schnoodle puppy?"

The following tips will help you to delay discovery:

  1. Create your blog with an email address that looks like yourpseudonym@gmail.com. Use only this address for anything connected to your blog.
  2. Lie about details that identify you or the people you write about. Make a list so you're consistent. Change hair colour, home towns, neigbourhoods, work places, birth day, month and year.
  3. This means you cannot say what astrological sign you are. It will be okay. People will still understand that you have a complicated personality without knowing that you are a Scorpio with Taurus rising.
  4. If you have a hobby or career that you have to write about, find some way to throw us off track. If you play the dobro, tell us you play the banjo.
  5. Do not reveal how you placed in a specific competition.
  6. Lie about where you go to yoga.
  7. Lie about where you go for coffee.
  8. Do not reveal your usual spot.
  9. Do not use the same artistic style in drawings on your pseudonym blog that you use on your real name blog.
  10. Don't link to your friends' sites unless they are also using pseudonyms and following these guidelines.
  11. Don't comment on your friends' sites under your pseudonym.
  12. Moderate your comments and do not approve any that reveal personal details about yourself that you have not already revealed.
And remember, you are only delaying discovery. Eventually people will know your secret identity.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Especially #9. I might be a little dim-witted, but that's what twigged me to your alternate identity. ;)

4th Dwarf said...

Zoom, I am leaving your comment up to illustrate that if it had merit, I should be following #12.

As it is, you must be thinking of someone else. I have no artistic style.

Anonymous said...

See, I *told* you I was a little dim-witted.

aandjblog said...

really interesting post. I"ll try and stick to some of these points :)

XUP said...

Gee - no one has ever cared enough to try to find out my secret identity. Should I feel unloved and uninteresting?

coyote said...

Ummm, gee, so how do you know somebody's not working on it at this very second!!??

Just askin'...

4th Dwarf said...

A&J, your being possibly two people puts an interesting angle on it for you.

Ms Pedestrian, my friend Coyote states the obvious, and possibly because he doesn't want to alarm you, didn't state the more obvious that for all we know, your cover is already blown. There is no way that the stalkarazzi wouldn't be curious about seeing those gogo boots in action.

(By the way, Coyote, is your report ready?)

XUP said...

I'm under deep, deep cover. Not even CSIS with all its little men running around in mysterious circles can discover my true identity. The boots shield me from penetration of any description.

4th Dwarf said...

The boots shield you from "penetration of any description"?

That's a good pair of boots!

coyote said...

Maybe they're chest waders...?