But I'm not known here by my real name. My participation in DKos has resulted in me having a pseudonym which I've come to identity with. Moreover, I have one ActBlue page (my first attempt at this. I'm finally diving in.) and it is associated with my handle here and the email account that I set up for that handle.
So, my DKos action profile will not be associated with the bulk of my DKos activity?
When I registered at DKos during the 2008 Presidential Primaries (that is, in 2007) I had never been involved in an online political group.
I didn't see any other place with as much intelligent dialog and enough people with whom I could relate politically, so I chose DKos to be my online political home. As a newbie, though, I was wary. I wasn't new to online community and I knew about flame wars. In the political arena, I figured it would be rougher. And it was. I quickly learned about trolls, too. Some of whom seemed enough off-balance that I didn't feel safe revealing my identity. So, I registered with a handle, like oh so many of us.
Later, I would branch out and apply for a scholarship at DFA. For my DKos friends to recognize me, I used my handle there. This happened in a few places and now I, basically, have an online identity. I've even begun to gather my writings from different venues into a magazine-style blog called Una Muses at http://www.unaspenser.com
Someday, I'll write about the character my handle is based on. Suffice it to say for now, she's a character I admire. Plus, there is a connection to my IRL name. Suffice to say, I've come to adopt the name. I have a little bit of writing aspiration and if I ever publish, I'll likely do so as UnaSpenser.
So, what to do when the dKos Action page comes along and they're asking us to sign petitions and who knows what else in the future?
Can we ask DKos to set those up so there is a place for our handle, while anything official going out can have our real name on it? (For me this means association two email addresses, too.)
Do I just live with the disassociation between my inner reader/diary/commenter/social DKos self and my DKos Action self?
Am I having an online identity crisis?!
Update:
- I'm perfectly willing to find out that I don't understand the use of Action Account and that it really doesn't matter if its associated with my regular DKos account.
- None of the may seem meaningful if you haven't logged into an Action account. In it, there is a page which connects to any ActBlue pages you've created. Only, I created mine with my handle and its associated address. But, I didn't put my handle in as the name on the account, because it seems to me that petitions should have real names. No?