We’ve been around for a year, and a lot of people are here now. We’re not as small as we used to be, and I’ve seen a couple things lately that I think I need to address. This is really important, especially if you’re one of our many younger ficleteers. I know it’s a little long, and may be a little complicated, but it’s important for everyone to be on the same page.
Before we get started, though, we need to go over a couple of definitions:
identity: who or what a person is
persona: The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.
There are social networks out there, like Facebook, that pretty much demand that you represent your identity. It’s supposed to be an accurate-as-possible representation of your identity. Then, there are places online, like Second Life or World of Warcraft, that are all about creating personas – imaginary alter egos for you to take on. They are worlds of imagination, not reality.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. At SxSW last week, I saw two great documentaries: Second Skin and We Are Wizards. They’re both about online or fan worlds where people take on the personas of either the characters they love from the world of Harry Potter or the characters they play as in online role playing games.
Now, you may not think this has anything at all to do with ficlets, but it does. When you signed up for the site, you were asked to create a pen name and fill out a profile. When we first launched, I tried to be “Chuck Dickens” but realized very quickly that I couldn’t have a persona on ficlets that’s different than my real identity because I’m the public face of the site. This made me kind of sad. I wanted to play with the anonymity that ficlets provides. I loved that I knew my friends and co-workers were signing up for the site, but because of the pen names and the fact that we never reveal the identifier you use to log in, I had no idea who was who, unless they told me.
We have many many young people on ficlets. First off, I think this is awesome, and I love watching you guys grow as writers and how welcoming the community is of the younger ficleteers of us. But, there’s a danger here that’s very serious, and something I want to make sure I address so we don’t run into trouble in the future. There are… less than helpful or kind people here. It’s unfortunately a fact of life that there is evil in the world, and though we’re mostly nice here, we’re not immune from it.
Here’s the important bit: If you’re under 18, please please please don’t reveal anything that could let people find out who you really are or where you live. This includes:
- your age
- where you live, go to school or play sports (including the name of the league)
- your real name
- any contact information about yourself, including links to other profiles you may have
I’m not going to enforce this yet, because it’s very easy to lie and it’s something that’s onerous to enforce. If we have problems, then we’ll be forced to implement something, and I really don’t want to do that.
Ficlets is about imagination. It’s a place to experiment with expressing yourself in new ways and becoming better at creating plots, characters, dialogue and experiences. I’d hate for that to be ruined by a few bad apples, or something bad happened because they revealed too much information about their real life.
So, please go look at your profiles and make sure that you’re not revealing too much about yourself. Remember, that includes your age, where you live, contact information or anything else that could be used to identify you in the real world. And remember, no one from ficlets (which right now, is just me) will ever contact you and ask you for any personal information, especially if I know you’re under the age of 18.
If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to send me a note.
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