This is where, I believe, today's social media get things very wrong in a social context (although I understand that it works for them for selling ads).
In real life -- Is IRL coming back? -- we have many social circles and behave differently in them. Some folk invoke entirely new persona, but most of us have just the one. Nevertheless, people in those different groups will regard us differently.
For example, when you think of bringing two separate groups of friends or social groups together, it's often easy to establish why it wouldn't work. Often when you do bring them together, they split into the original groups, regardless. (Not always, I know; sometimes it works.)
IRL, you can "be yourself" and move between groups without creating a new persona. That's just normal life as it has been forever. Online, however, the only mechanism to move freely between different groups is to create a separate account and, perhaps, a separate persona.
However, the ad-sellers want to know all about the one person, so they discourage this behaviour. e.g. Forcing the use of real names and performing formal validation of id.
It's interesting to me that this was never an issue (at least for me) back in the days of Usenet (and to some extent IRC, still).
(Aside: It's in this area that I believe that Twitter missed its chance. It could have owned this space. Sadly, it chose to sell ads.)
In real life -- Is IRL coming back? -- we have many social circles and behave differently in them. Some folk invoke entirely new persona, but most of us have just the one. Nevertheless, people in those different groups will regard us differently.
For example, when you think of bringing two separate groups of friends or social groups together, it's often easy to establish why it wouldn't work. Often when you do bring them together, they split into the original groups, regardless. (Not always, I know; sometimes it works.)
IRL, you can "be yourself" and move between groups without creating a new persona. That's just normal life as it has been forever. Online, however, the only mechanism to move freely between different groups is to create a separate account and, perhaps, a separate persona.
However, the ad-sellers want to know all about the one person, so they discourage this behaviour. e.g. Forcing the use of real names and performing formal validation of id.
It's interesting to me that this was never an issue (at least for me) back in the days of Usenet (and to some extent IRC, still).
(Aside: It's in this area that I believe that Twitter missed its chance. It could have owned this space. Sadly, it chose to sell ads.)