Anonymity

So, from the last post (not the comment post) I started thinking. Normally I twitter In this case I don't because well It's a bit longer of a thought or more of thoughts. 

One of the thoughts came about and leads from the first. 

Ghost writing has been around for ages ever since stories were conceived. Take for example one of the more famous ones Mark Twain. His actual name was Samuel Clemmens as I'm sure many of us all know. Somewhere in him he didn't want to go by his given name and instead write by a name put together by using river navigational terms. We're still doing the same thing. Only now we've got a larger vocabulary to use. Other people's names to web items and new things that have been invented since S.C.'s time. 

Has it been in us to loose our identity? Why are we always striving to be some one else and not some one else at the same time? We want to be the best for ourselves and our friends don't we?

At the same time it is comforting to know that as I write this I am not who I appear to be. So I wondered is this the next evolutionary step. For the masses to now have different identities instead of those select few? 

We now have an online presence one we have that we show to our employers and one we show to our friends and then there is one we show to the world yet no one knows who we truly are. Even second life holds personalities that don't truly exist anywhere else. 

All this brings me to the discussion that stemmed from class. If we are trying to keep our lives separated. Why is it that using an alias on twitter is such a bad thing? I understand that there may be some confusion on names especially if you're tracking new people and new things. At the same time though we are who we are and we like to keep parts of our lives separate. Especially a professor who is well versed in using avatar names and aliases should not mind that people use their branded names online and offline choose to do what they please. 

Any input on your thoughts?