I killed Slinky
Apr. 28th, 2003 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianWell, OK, it wasn't just me. Maybe I assisted in her suicide.
What am I talking about?
It all started when my friend - let's call her 'Rhi' - and I were both starting to get into Livejournal, and somehow we ended up playing a game of trying to find each other. I've chronicled it already.
Or maybe it started further back than that, the first time she told me about her illicit online alter-ego, Auden. Back at the beginning, I wasn't that interested. After all, I read Interview with a vampire and didn't feel inclined to read any of the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. I could see the appeal of slashing it for someone who'd enjoyed the books, but I hadn't, so I chalked it up to 'things my friends do that I'm not interested in'.
But over the years, as my involvement with the online world grew, Rhi's participation in fandom moved into other areas, and started including the issues of online culture that I was starting to get interested in, too.
When I found Slinky, although she'd asked me to respect the separation of her online and offline identities, she hadn't asked me not to read, so I read. Her journal (although she updated rarely ;-) and those of her fandom friends. I started occasionally wanting to post a comment. A couple of times, I got halfway through writing one, anonymously, and stopped. If I posted anonymously, I'd have to explain why, and then it's all getting too complicated, so I never actually did.
I had - have - another LJ username, which I've used for bits and pieces of ranting and venting in the past, when I wanted to keep it separate from this journal, so I turned all of those posts into private ones, picked up the journal, walked over to where Slinky hung out, and friended her. She knew who I was immediately, and didn't seem to object, although I later wondered if I should have talked it over with her first. Still, as I've said somewhere else this weekend, you can't close Pandora's Box. She'd been talking to me about these things, and presumably appreciating my interest in them, and once we'd got to that stage, they were my interests as well as hers. So I posted a few comments here and there, when I read something I was interested in, and had something to say. The first, mundanely enough, on the subject of Mac laptops, which you all know is close to my heart ;-)
I read LJ more than she does, so sometimes I'd send her an email with a link and 'Have you seen this yet?', or we'd talk about some of the discussions we were both following on LJ. The lines were blurring more and more.
They weren't only blurring around me. Other real life friends of hers gradually became aware of where she was on LJ (although I don't think any were reading and participating as I was), and other LJ friends knew her real name.
This last week, the same rant-subject cropped up on my friends list, and on hers. I read both, and sent her an email linking both, saying 'wouldn't it be fun if we could introduce these two and watch the ensuing argument'. I didn't mean it as criticism, or even as an actual wish to introduce the people from her two different lives, although perhaps she interpreted it as that.
She started posting things about being unsure about the future of the Slinky identity, and maybe wanting to start a new LJ, culminating in an open invitation for the people from both sides of her life who knew about Slinky to post thoughts on what she should do about her personality separation.
And then, yesterday, I watched her replace Slinky.
I don't know how much of the decision was because of me, and I don't know whether she feels the new way is better, or just necessary.
I don't know if I should apologise for my part in forcing a change, or if I should expect gratitude for my part in clarifying her thoughts on the separation. I've often suspected she regrets letting me into Slinky's life as much as she did, and although none of my behaviour was intended to narrow the gap, some of it did.
But you can't control what people do with what you give them of yourself. You can ask them to behave in certain ways, and you can do things like use different names, and hang out in different places, to influence how they treat you, but how they think of you is mostly beyond your control.
I never really thought of Slinky as separate from Rhi. I don't know why that is. I've realised that for some of my other friends (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chrestomancy and lathany are the ones I've noticed it happening with), I do think of their LJ identities as at least slightly separate from their RL identities, but that was never the case with Slinky. I've only been referring to her as 'Slinky' since yesterday, and only because the nature of the conversations has forced me to have a way to distinguish 'Slinky' from 'Rhi', and it feels a bit strange.
The fact that I never thought of Slinky as a separate person was mostly beyond my control, and beyond hers, but had a big impact on the way I related to her. If I'd thought about that a bit more at the time, I could have made a conscious effort to separate, but that's the sort of thinking that's only possible with hindsight.
So if my behaviour was a major contributing factor in the death of Slinky, that behaviour was influenced by a subconscious peculiarity of my mental filing system. Perhaps that means that, from the first time Rhi told me about Vampire Chronicles slash, and 'Auden', the integration was inevitable.
On balance, I think I won't apologise, but neither will I expect gratitude ;-)
Welcome to this part of LJ,secretrebel.
What am I talking about?
It all started when my friend - let's call her 'Rhi' - and I were both starting to get into Livejournal, and somehow we ended up playing a game of trying to find each other. I've chronicled it already.
Or maybe it started further back than that, the first time she told me about her illicit online alter-ego, Auden. Back at the beginning, I wasn't that interested. After all, I read Interview with a vampire and didn't feel inclined to read any of the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. I could see the appeal of slashing it for someone who'd enjoyed the books, but I hadn't, so I chalked it up to 'things my friends do that I'm not interested in'.
But over the years, as my involvement with the online world grew, Rhi's participation in fandom moved into other areas, and started including the issues of online culture that I was starting to get interested in, too.
When I found Slinky, although she'd asked me to respect the separation of her online and offline identities, she hadn't asked me not to read, so I read. Her journal (although she updated rarely ;-) and those of her fandom friends. I started occasionally wanting to post a comment. A couple of times, I got halfway through writing one, anonymously, and stopped. If I posted anonymously, I'd have to explain why, and then it's all getting too complicated, so I never actually did.
I had - have - another LJ username, which I've used for bits and pieces of ranting and venting in the past, when I wanted to keep it separate from this journal, so I turned all of those posts into private ones, picked up the journal, walked over to where Slinky hung out, and friended her. She knew who I was immediately, and didn't seem to object, although I later wondered if I should have talked it over with her first. Still, as I've said somewhere else this weekend, you can't close Pandora's Box. She'd been talking to me about these things, and presumably appreciating my interest in them, and once we'd got to that stage, they were my interests as well as hers. So I posted a few comments here and there, when I read something I was interested in, and had something to say. The first, mundanely enough, on the subject of Mac laptops, which you all know is close to my heart ;-)
I read LJ more than she does, so sometimes I'd send her an email with a link and 'Have you seen this yet?', or we'd talk about some of the discussions we were both following on LJ. The lines were blurring more and more.
They weren't only blurring around me. Other real life friends of hers gradually became aware of where she was on LJ (although I don't think any were reading and participating as I was), and other LJ friends knew her real name.
This last week, the same rant-subject cropped up on my friends list, and on hers. I read both, and sent her an email linking both, saying 'wouldn't it be fun if we could introduce these two and watch the ensuing argument'. I didn't mean it as criticism, or even as an actual wish to introduce the people from her two different lives, although perhaps she interpreted it as that.
She started posting things about being unsure about the future of the Slinky identity, and maybe wanting to start a new LJ, culminating in an open invitation for the people from both sides of her life who knew about Slinky to post thoughts on what she should do about her personality separation.
And then, yesterday, I watched her replace Slinky.
I don't know how much of the decision was because of me, and I don't know whether she feels the new way is better, or just necessary.
I don't know if I should apologise for my part in forcing a change, or if I should expect gratitude for my part in clarifying her thoughts on the separation. I've often suspected she regrets letting me into Slinky's life as much as she did, and although none of my behaviour was intended to narrow the gap, some of it did.
But you can't control what people do with what you give them of yourself. You can ask them to behave in certain ways, and you can do things like use different names, and hang out in different places, to influence how they treat you, but how they think of you is mostly beyond your control.
I never really thought of Slinky as separate from Rhi. I don't know why that is. I've realised that for some of my other friends (
chrestomancy and lathany are the ones I've noticed it happening with), I do think of their LJ identities as at least slightly separate from their RL identities, but that was never the case with Slinky. I've only been referring to her as 'Slinky' since yesterday, and only because the nature of the conversations has forced me to have a way to distinguish 'Slinky' from 'Rhi', and it feels a bit strange.The fact that I never thought of Slinky as a separate person was mostly beyond my control, and beyond hers, but had a big impact on the way I related to her. If I'd thought about that a bit more at the time, I could have made a conscious effort to separate, but that's the sort of thinking that's only possible with hindsight.
So if my behaviour was a major contributing factor in the death of Slinky, that behaviour was influenced by a subconscious peculiarity of my mental filing system. Perhaps that means that, from the first time Rhi told me about Vampire Chronicles slash, and 'Auden', the integration was inevitable.
On balance, I think I won't apologise, but neither will I expect gratitude ;-)
Welcome to this part of LJ,
secretrebel.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Hmmm
Date: 2003-04-28 03:34 am (UTC)I never found it. I'm interested in the similarity between the names "Slinky" and "Slinker" - was that deliberate ?
I've realised that for some of my other friends (chrestomancy and lathany are the ones I've noticed it happening with), I do think of their LJ identities as at least slightly separate from their RL identities
I remember you saying that before. I find this quite odd, because I am Lathany. Although, I suppose that there are pieces missing. There is a line beyond which I won't post - when it goes beyond the chatty and into the personal (I try and avoid bitching too much on LJ as well). Plus, of course, I get to re-read my entries and comments and delete or re-word things. I don't do that in real life (plus I've always been better at getting my points/views across in writing than in talking).
I don't know if I should apologise for my part in forcing a change, or if I should expect gratitude for my part in clarifying her thoughts on the separation.
Hmmm. I think that if someone invents a second personality, then most of the responsibility for good/bad interactions with other people rests with that inventor. I felt that way about Slinker as well (although Slinker is a different case from Slinky).
I never really thought of Slinky as separate from Rhi
Interesting. I suspect it would be even more interesting if I had seen the account in question. I imagine that Rhi's realisation of that might have had an influence on her "Slinky" decision. I can believe that creating a supposed "separate" personality and then finding that people still regard it as part of you would be food for thought.
<thinks about it all>
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2003-04-28 03:48 am (UTC)I think the others did more by accident than design - a chance eye over her shoulder at her computer, or something like that.
I'm interested in the similarity between the names "Slinky" and "Slinker" - was that deliberate?
'Slinky' isn't the whole name. She hasn't referred to the whole name herself in her new account, so once again I'm respecting the places she draws the lines, although it's a fairly simple matter to find it now. It was a name lifted from a book, rather than invented, so 'perhaps' is the answer ;-) She may chime in here herself when she reads it.
I remember you saying that before. I find this quite odd, because I am Lathany. Although, I suppose that there are pieces missing.
I think it's the pieces missing that makes the difference.
I think that if someone invents a second personality, then most of the responsibility for good/bad interactions with other people rests with that inventor.
I think so, too, although this was more a separation of interests than an invention of personality. What I meant, though, was that I considered apologising because I agreed to respect the boundaries she had drawn, and was allowed inside them on that condition, but my actions eventually contributed to their breakdown, technically breaking my promise.
<thinks about it all>
Yeah, I'm still churning it around in my head a bit ;-)
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2003-04-28 07:22 am (UTC)I chose the name for another reason but when I noticed the similarity it kind of clinched it, since I was creating a kind of sock-puppet.
Also, slinkys are cool. They slink down stairs and everything...
no subject
Date: 2003-04-28 04:55 am (UTC)On the one hand, if you were asked to never mention her existance to anyone else and you did, then she's got a right to be annoyed.
On the other hand, assuming it's the person I think it is (and if it isn't you're playing some strange mind games) then if a person is naturally an exhibitionist then it's not beyond the realm of comprehension that their reason for showing you their LJ in the first place was not just to include you, but to show off to you as well, as in "look at me, I have this complete other set of friends". It's all very well having a secret alter ego, but it's not very cool if you can't show it to a few people so that they know what a cool secret you're keeping.
I respect retaining alter-egos as part of social experiments (up to a point). I respect people's need for segregating their social lives. I respect the need to rip it up and start again. I don't respect people crying foul and feigning ignorance of the consequences of their own actions.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-28 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-28 07:20 am (UTC)Heh. How true. But it doesn't take actually showing off the identity concerned. You can just say "I've got a secret" and smirk.
I respect retaining alter-egos as part of social experiments (up to a point). I respect people's need for segregating their social lives. I respect the need to rip it up and start again. I don't respect people crying foul and feigning ignorance of the consequences of their own actions.
I wasn't! Really... The time had come for some personality integration, is all. That and the fact that I was writing to a particular subset of my friends about interests that I shared with people not in that group. And that there were really only a few kinds of people I wouldn't want to find me, and if they really wanted to there'd be no way of stopping them. Hmm, lots of reasons, really.
So anyway, Triskellian didn't do me wrong. And it wasn't all about her. But she's one of the people who crossed over from one area of my life to another and made me think it a Good Thing. ;)