It’s funny those things you take for granted, until something happens to cause you to see how bizarre and artificial they seem to others.
Before I started my current PhD, I maintained (well, largely I neglected, but that’s another matter) a blog on which I posted pseudonymously on topics that could loosely be grouped under the theme of the sociology of technology. For various reasons, instead of transforming the content of that blog when I started my current project, I started this current blog and decided to drop the pseudonym. For a very brief time, though, I was still running both blogs on the same web host, and my admin email, which was the same for both accounts, displayed the pseudonym to prevent my accidentally “outing” myself when replying to someone’s mail.
Fast forward a couple of years and several web hosts, and for some reason I had never gotten around to taking the pseudonym off the admin email account for this blog. Since I almost never receive email to that account, the issue had entirely slipped my mind. Until, of course, recently, when a senior academic at my university for some reason decided to email me at that address. Not thinking, I hit reply – and then found myself in a very interesting conversation about why I would ever have needed a pseudonym. What struck me quite strongly during the conversation is how very weird this practice seems to someone not familiar with blogging convention – it was actually quite difficult to convey, both that this isn’t particularly unusual, and that it implies nothing particularly nefarious. I’m not sure this guy has looked at me the same way since…
Then we have a less virtual example… I had scheduled a lunchtime meeting with someone for whom I’m doing a bit of research-related consulting work. We met outside the university, she decided she wasn’t in the mood for the cafe where I had intended to take us and, looking around for options, she spotted “my” coffeeshop, and asked what that place was like. Without thinking, I responded that I went there all the time – and was then left with the sinking feeling, as we ducked inside, that the venue might not really be what one might call… ideal for a business meeting with a much older professional. This feeling got stronger when she insisted on going into the back, and the unconventional Garden of Eden mural began to loom into view. Fortunately, all was well – and I did at least manage to convince her that we shouldn’t exit through the back (where the artwork places the concept of lordship and bondage in a decidedly non-reading-group light…).