Monikers please

I had a friend in middle school who we called Merv. He was originally from the ‘slums of Glasgow’ – (his description not mine). He wrote his name as Murray but it came out sounding like Merv. We all, including our various teachers, just thought it was one of those slums of Glasgow accent thingies and took to calling him what we thought he was saying to our very Canadian ears. Now Merv had a terrible memory for names so early on he developed this rather peculiar coping strategy. He literally referred to everyone he met as either ‘Jock’ for a male or ‘Jane’ for female. Eventually, a new person introduced to Merv would correct him, and he always gave a ‘right, now Jock/Jane as I was saying’ and continue on using his moniker for him or her.

Why am I dredging up this very ancient memory? Because of the whole Anonymous commenter thingy has become my latest peeve. There is nothing more irritating to me than receiving comments from ‘Anonymous’. It becomes even more irritating when there are two or more different posters all calling themselves ‘Anonymous’. It is not that I am asking for everyone to correctly identify themselves using their actual names in the blogsphere. In fact, some of my favourite bloggers use a moniker. I like monikers, and use a moniker of sorts. I am called Kateland in real life (well usually people shorten it to Kate and I am okay with that) but rarely am I referred to as Kateland aka TZH. TZH is a short form for the The Zionist Hack. That little add-on was given to me by an anonymous commenter on another blog.

I can come up with literally a dozen very good and legitimate reasons for not using one’s full legal name including the risk of having someone attempt to steal your real life identity to being stalking by a crazed out of control petulant troll. And if you have ever been stalked in real life you will understand instinctively what I mean. How beret of imagination do you possibly have to be that one cannot take the seconds necessary to come up with a moniker or handle for an online identity rather than use Anonymous? Please people, a little imagination, and if you really are stumped, email me. I’ll give you a moniker that your mother never thought of.