Meta Footprint

I entered Alachia into this cool visualization output tool done by MIT. (http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb). It combined the meta for all digital traces of my existence and compiled this data.

Unfortunately, my name is borrowed from other unique character in the verse who has a lot of data written about her. Queen Alachia of the Blood Elves from an RPG table top fantasy game I used to play. I think that’s why there are a lot of visualizations regarding “books” and “genealogy” in that composite.

I’m fascinated mostly though by the difference in meta output from Alachia and my real name. Because when I entered my real name I got an entirely different result. I don’t exist online as my RL name.

I am not exactly surprised by this at all as I’ve taken great efforts to separate the two identities and leave the one that is most insignificant behind in the RL.

I am quite happy to see that I, Alachia, am able to visualize a completely meta footprint after all.

I’m not ashamed of my RL self at all. We’re one in the same really. It’s just that her identity, the one bearing my real name, doesn’t have much meaning. Just as the visualization tool findings, there is no substance to that identity. I’ve actually contemplated on changing my RL name at one point but then realized I like the flexibility the duality of existences provides me.

Chapter 26: Lifesharing

So you’re me about 10 years ago and everything is all brand new and shiny and unexplored. You can’t wait to get your foot out the door and truly expose who you are. If you’re me and a socially awkward child, your means of doing this gravitate towards the meta.

You live for online, you live for sharing yourself online. For years you post pics of yourself, your activities, and all you dark creepy thoughts into the void. You’re not sharing to anyone in particular but just archiving who you are at the time to some online unlimited storage space.

Fast forward about six years and you decide you’re going to make this podcast based on a video game you love. All the sudden protecting your RL identity matters and you don’t want people getting an uncut version of you. You’re trying to stake out your territory and you don’t want your homoerotic fantasies getting in the way of that vision. lol.

What do you do? You stupidly erase every last bits of the last six years of yourself off the face of the meta and go into the witness protection program. WHY? Just so people won’t judge you for the wrong reasons only they end up doing it anyhow and so it was all for not! The one thing I got out of it though was proving that I could make a podcast work and being purely meta.

Present day. I want my life back… online. Over the last four years, there’s so much I’ve wanted to share and be open about but have been keeping everything to myself. So where do you begin?

Well, A LOT of methods of life sharing have changed since I was a life sharer. New tools and new media to do the things I used to host myself. So where does one begin?

1) Go back to your roots – start mind dumping. I used to love Live Journal because of their desktop client. I’m all about being to just open up an app and start writing. A shame I can’t find one for blogger because it’s now my blog host of choice.

2) Get all my photo albums out of the safety deposit box and back on the web. share share share. I ended up choosing flickr because of its prominent widgets and stream effect ordering.

3) Keep trying to wrap my head around all the tools to advance life sharing and find ways to consolidate them.