Who are you and why on earth should I trust you? Why should I give you any of my money?
Whatever anonymity I have left, I guard like a rabid dog. I am a single female living alone in a small, conservative town. I work for the Internet porn industry. If I were living in a big city I might be more inclined to tell friends and complete strangers that I work for dirty bad pornographers. The thing is, I don’t. I live in the kind of town where there’s a fifty-fifty chance I could end up before a judge because of my unusual writing job.
"Some newbie webmasters (and naughty veterans) have a little trouble with answerability. Some take that whole cyber-identity thing a little too far." |
Believe me, I am a free speech fan. I’m a civil rights and constitution-loving babe. In perfect happy democratic world, everyone is tolerant of each other and lives in harmony despite our varied opinions. I know that I make an honest living working for a profession that provides an outlet for a very human need. Nevertheless, I am old. I am old enough to recognize and anticipate the actions and reactions of others to my occupation. Sure, my family knows what I do. My close friends know what I do. All of you know what I do. The manager at my grocery store? He doesn’t know what I do. My favorite teller at the bank? She knows that I am a technical writer for a Canadian-based company. My kid’s friends and parents? Technical writer.
Am I being dishonest? A hypocrite? Could be. I think I’m just being careful. I like my life. I don’t want to spoil it. What I do for a living is my business and I don’t think I am making any kind of moral compromise.
Then again, there’s a lot to be said for accountability. Some newbie webmasters (and naughty veterans) have a little trouble with answerability. Some take that whole cyber-identity thing a little too far. Some are foolish with the invisibility inherent in the system.
From the name-happy newbie to the shape-shifting veteran shark, it’s almost impossible to tell who is who is who. While it’s kind of silly to editorialize on identity in a world of nicknames, I am going to editorialize.
Pick one and stick with it.
The same goes for email addresses and domain names. You can’t go around having ten different identities in cyberspace and expect anything to come of it but confusion. Ultimately you are selling yourself when you sell and promote online porn. You sell yourself to fellow webmasters and to adult service providers and sponsors. You sell yourself to surfers. You sell yourself as a professional and it’s vital that your identity is consistent.
You’ve got to pick. You’ve got to choose one nickname, one email address and one domain name to represent you and your business. The reasons for this should be obvious but I’ll explain them anyway:
Nobody is telling you that you should only own/run one website. However, your website your cyber portfolio, your resume if you will. The pages you have on the web prove that you are indeed an adult webmaster. Of course you should own and run other sites but surely there is one site that best exemplifies you. Fly that domain in your sig file. Print it on your business cards. People can’t see you behind that monitor; a single domain gives you a face.
The cool part about owning one good domain and hosting it on the web is that it comes with an equally good email address. As you may have heard, most adult webmasters shun free email accounts such as those from Hotmail and Yahoo. That’s not because adult webmasters are elitists who look down on newbies too poor to pay for hosting. Internet pornographers hate free email accounts because cheaters use them too. Free email accounts are easy to get and many bad webmasters have used new free email accounts as a way to hide their rotten identities. You can register a domain, open a paid hosting account with your own email address for less than twenty dollars. Use that one email for all your adult business correspondence. Use it for submitting galleries. Use it for all the sponsor programs you join. Use it when you sign up for message boards. Use it when you buy from content providers. A consistent email address is like Caller ID for the net.
The Internet is fun. One of the fun things is being able to pick a sweet nickname. Still, the whole nickname situation is a tad inconsistent with the concept of reliable identity. Some adult webmasters use their real, full names as their nicknames. Most of the time these real-name folk are big players that are well respected but not always. Sometimes the real name is a fake. This is why it’s imperative that you choose a user/nickname and stick with it, through thick and thin. On message boards, on ICQ, when you sign up for sponsors, whenever the form has a field that says USERNAME, fill it in with one (and only one) nickname.
I understand and enjoy the anonymity of the Internet. You’re not being asked to give up your privacy. This is simply an article exemplifying the benefits of a reliable identity on the adult web. The net is mysterious enough and adult webmasters are among the most wary of its citizens. You may have to live in the physical world but you do your business in cyberspace. You gain respect from your peers with an unwavering identity. This is how to be you.
SUBMIT