SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I recently discovered this excellent alternative history novel. What makes it more amazing is the fact that is was written before the war, and its insight into a Nazi-dominated world is frighteningly realized.

John wrote: "I recently discovered this excellent alternative history novel. What makes it more amazing is the fact that is was written before the war, and its insight into a Nazi-dominated world is frighteningly realized. "

Is it a secret?

Or did you also forget it?

Or he is a spamming author who will be leaving the group?

I'll pick Door #3!

Oh, it's a stupid bot. Did not realize.

Should not have eaten that entire bag of Oreos; it has dulled my senses.

Haha!

Too many Johns around here. Hopefully no one will mistake him for me (a non-spamming author).

John wrote: "Too many Johns around here. Hopefully no one will mistake him for me (a non-spamming author)."

Heh, I’m perpetually confused by all the various Johns/Jons, Michaels, Jims, Marys, etc. I don’t have good facial recognition skills to begin with, so the tiny pictures don’t help me much. I love it when people add something else after their name like Colleen does so their name is more recognizable and personal. The purple hair helps too. :)

I actually miss the good old days of Internet usage when more people used a handle. I know I’m in the minority and most people think using real names is less anonymous but, unless I know somebody in person, their real name is just as anonymous to me as a handle would be. More anonymous, actually, if I can’t distinguish them from other similarly-named people and recognize them from thread to thread.

I also like handles because they convey a bit of info about the person -- what they like, how they see themselves, or how they want other people to see them. A real name doesn’t do that, it’s just the name your parents liked before they even knew anything about you. And a handle is easier to remember which actually makes them less anonymous to me because I’m more likely to remember what that person said in other threads. If I ever saw the original John in this thread post somewhere else, I would be oblivious to his previous wrongdoings and treat him like a brand new person. But if he had named himself “John WooHooIWroteABook”, I’d remember him…

I know this is totally random and irrelevant and nobody probably cares but, since this thread is pointless anyway, and this has been on my mind for a while, and John (the other one) kinda/sorta brought it up, I just had to get it off my chest. I feel a better now. A little. :)

I have the same problem with names and also prefer nicknames that are unique. (Heh.)

Trike has been my Internet handle for 29 years now. I have always used a little red tricycle as my avatar, too. I have no idea what message it sends to people, since I don't think most people know what a "trike" is.

Trike wrote: "I have the same problem with names and also prefer nicknames that are unique. (Heh.)"

Ha. :) Maybe someday the current trend will reverse itself and everybody will be using handles again...

Trike wrote: "I have no idea what message it sends to people, since I don't think most people know what a "trike" is."

The great thing about the handle Trike is that it sticks out and I remember it because it makes me curious. I do know what a trike is, though! Which came first, the handle or your discovery of the quote in your profile?

The handle came first. It's a shortened version of my multisyllabic surname.

I made the quote up. I'm super creative like that.

Such creativity! ;)

I suspect mine gets lost in translation and seems terribly bizarre to anybody who doesn’t know English well, or at least anybody who reads it better than they speak it.

I agree - occasionally I have the great joy of seeing someone post somewhere and realising "hey! that's (probably) that guy I used to know ten years ago in a completely different place!" - which you don't get when everyone's just 'John'.


I also, as someone who was a young person discovering the internet in the nineties, have a slightly grouchy/smug reaction to modern privacy concerns. All my childhood there was this moral panic about kids going online, adopting fake names, maybe even making up stuff about themselves, and nobody would really know anything about who they were talking to!
And now there's a moral panic about kids going online and using their own names and revealing true things about themselves and everybody knows everything about everybody!
Well duh. Thanks, crotchety old people who are only just working this out. Why do you think my generation were using pseudonyms this whole time in the first place!?

Plus, as readers of SFF know, allowing a witch, warlock or wizard know your true name means they have power over you. Seems it's not just the SF writers who were prescient.

As a child growing up in lower-middle class circumstance during the most dangerous era in American history, caution is second nature to me. But even though I've had to replace my credit cards three times this year alone due to various corporate hacks, I'll take that over the race riots, knife fights and rampant crime I grew up with in the 1970s.

When I first started using goodreads I used a longtime handle of mine, but I was in a private group where everyone else went by their real names and I felt weird being the only handle, so I caved.

I'm pretty lax about the whole privacy thing. My husband is much more paranoid. He was a bit concerned when I put a picture on Facebook of the front of our house, and you could see the house number on it.

I was just like "You know deeds are public documents, right, and anyone can just google our names and get our address?"

That said, I do have my Facebook on friends' only view, but that's more because I tend to cuss a lot of bitch about work a lot, and I try and limit who can see that. (Though, yes, I'm aware it's more an illusion of limitation than an actuality.)

I first started chatting online in the mid-80’s when I was 10 years old. Back then, most people I knew in real life looked at me like I was crazy if I tried to tell them I talked to people over the computer.

But even back then, with so few people online, there were some pretty darn crazy people. One of my “fondest” memories is of the person who, upon learning my age, asked me if I had pubic hair yet. I actually received much fewer weird messages like that once I stopped telling people my age and everybody just assumed I was an adult. Maybe they just didn't want to risk hitting on a 90 year old. :)

I figure adults can do what they want but, if I had children, I would never knowingly allow them to use their real names online, even on sites with privacy settings.

Hey, now - I'll bet that poor li'l string of code is just lonely and doing its simple-minded best to reach out. For shame, all of you who can pass the Turing Test. Bots are people too!

Trike wrote: "I have the same problem with names and also prefer nicknames that are unique. (Heh.)

Trike has been my Internet handle for 29 years now. I have always used a little red tricycle as my avatar, too...."

Since I'm not used to hearing tricycles called trikes, it makes me think of the Jurassic Park slang for Triceratops.

My favorite dino, so that works for me.