Shall Remain Nameless

Author Jenny Crusie has blogged about her hate-on for Miss Snark due to Miss Snark being an anonymous blogger.

...you can pretty much lob any bomb you want and then slink away into the night while everybody else takes the hit, so you have no accountability and no credibility.

The original dispute is way too boring to recite here, but I was puzzled at the slug at anonymous people on the net. Really, if we were to get rid of all the anonymous people, there would be no one left in cyberspace. Is Bookseller Chick a coward, too? 'Cos it seems like Bookseller Chick is just someone who has a day job she does not want to get fired from. As are a lot of anonymous people on the net. Being anonymous does not make you good, bad, or evil. It just makes you someone whose identity is nobody's business.

Then something twigged in my memory and on Crusie's bio page I found: "... the second book published under the Crusie pseudonym." So no one knows Jenny Crusie's real name either. Would Miss Snark be more honourable if she called her blog "Betty Williams" instead of "Miss Snark"? Why? What the hell is the difference? Why does my head hurt?

Personally, I don't care what anybody's name is. Most romance authors write under a pseudonym and I could care less; I just want books to read. I like reading blogs, too, and I don't care if your name is Henry or Dwight or Judy. Henry, Dwight, or Judy can lie just as easily as someone called Anonymous. In every situation, it's always reader beware.

Off to find aspirin,
Abby