How to create a good pseudonymous persona

Ah, good point.
I shall stick with my original pseudonym of ‘Annie Dozian’.

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I remember when The Brothers Chaps did this.

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But, but… I’m already a pseudonymous persona. Layers of them, even. There’s no real me to be found.

I suspect all the entities churning out fake identities to man their bot social media sock puppets already have systems set up to do this, though (and probably at scale, too). The abusive version got here first.

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I know several people who constantly use variations of their first and last names for both work and online activities.

Nothing as dramatic as a Klingon name - but when you search their true name online nothing appears.

It’s like the real person has never existed.

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So you mean a random given name and surname that are both common as dirt and thoroughly ungoogleable but not quite as on the nose as John Smith?

Hmm.

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I’ll just use my RPG name generator.

Thrangaar Beardbolt.

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oddly enough, all of my pseudonymous personas are good, and all of my anonymous personas are chaotic neutral. it wasn’t so much a plan, it just worked out that way

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I did this pretty regularly for a while, both for sneaky purposes and also to protect myself. I was pretty involved in some forms of actism where I could reasonably foresee nefarious people working backwards from faces at protests through social networks to identify people. Creating cutouts for ways I could interact online made it vastly more difficult for people to use others to find me or use me to find others.

In my experience, this is a fine way to create a decent pseudonym, but not a good one. If you actually expect scrutiny, you probably don’t want to pick a random city. Too many things mark out regional knowledge to fake a city you aren’t familiar with.

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I am tempted to shout out that you are Peter Sellers and that I claim my £5 - but Peter Sellers is dead.
Allegedly.

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Memory Dancer sounds like a job title.

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In a cyberpunk novel, yeah.

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That which does not exist cannot die. (Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Peter Sellers R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!)

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I think it needs work … make sure your new job role matches what the employer would need.
Employment
Company: Rex Audio Video Appliance
Occupation: Cryptanalyst

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Wait a minute, 2 days and no one has made a George Anthony Devolver Kitara Ravache Santos joke yet? I am disappoint, BoingBoing!

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Just take the name of you first pet and the name of the street where you grew up, e.g. Fluffy St. George.

Wait, that’s your porn star name. Never mind.

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No no no, its your mother’s maiden name, the make of your first car, and the name of you best friend at school. Let’s all post our results here, along with the name of our banking institutions!

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When I drop one and change the sequence this works out as Roman Romeo Diez. Not bad.

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OK, now do your stormtrooper name, which is the bank where you have direct deposit set up, plus your 4-digit pin number.

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