Recently, I’ve been mulling over my on-screen pseudonym. I’ve already taken it out of my Twitter profile. I’ve been wondering whether I really needed it, especially when most of my writers hadn’t opted for one. We all display our full names on the about page anyway. So, I was in a bit of a quandary, but it was only when I had my mum read over my CV and go ‘ooh, that sounds a bit flaky, I’d take that out’ that I realised that it wasn’t really necessary any more.
When I made this site, back in 2008, Facebook was only just becoming a thing. Nobody used their real name online for anything. The internet was full of dark and mysterious strangers and hiding your true identity gave you a platform to talk about anything you wanted. We were never spewing vitriolic hate on here, but all of the original team were female. Even though it was just five years ago, nobody wanted to listen to what girls had to say about heavy music. So we all hid behind silly usernames. I picked mine after a Buffy marathon – it was Giles’ nickname when he was at university and dabbling in the occult. Others had song names, or witty puns. They were all ways of giving ourselves a voice.
Now I’m 22 years old and my voice is pretty loud. I’m still keeping the email address for the time being until I can hook up a new one to my accounts and clear some of the correspondence on it. And this is just step one in TBO’s latest reinvention. We’ll be looking shit hot by the end of the summer.
xoxo – Robyn