United We Stand: What’s In A Name?

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

My name is technically not TwinHits. For unless one has very strange parents, one would expect a more normal name for a person. However this is the internet, and here on the internet we name ourselves.

Not so much in the tribal sense of the word, there is no ceremony where the elders gather around the youth about to venture onto the web for the first time, lay their hands on his shoulders and declare him ‘Starman2000′. Instead, naming is a very personal act. It’s what comes to mind when you stare at the required and empty name field when you are rolling a new character, sign up on a new website, or even name your computer so it’s recognizable to you on your home network.

These names define the cyber-citizen because it is the name that divides the online person and the offline person. With a name comes a personality, completely separate from your real offline identity. These personalities can take on a life of their own making actions of that name entirely different from the actions of your real name, completely unconnected to each other. Separate identities lets one become separate people, different personas for different situations.

This is important because wherever one goes, one builds up a persona, like a reputation, that precedes them into the room. Everyone views them through the lenses of that persona. Moving away, changing schools, or changing jobs allow you to start all over and build up a new persona. However, (Read more...)

Read More...