Pseudonyms lets you practice agency - by Henrik Karlsson

I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s. I remember in particular a Swedish forum where my neighbor and I would go to read about filmmaking. I had never written in public, and I would not have dared to do it in real life, but this felt more like a video game. Everyone had wild, colorful pseudonyms. There were no faces. We thought it would be fun to pretend that we were a grown up, so we made a user, spun up a backstory, and began debating people. I wrote things using what I thought of as an adult voice, going on for hundreds of words about the ethics of piracy or the camera work in Tarkovsky’s films, while my friend and I laughed hard. But, well . . . then people started complimenting us on our writing. I logged on and saw that another user had commented saying that it was fascinating to see someone who was able to articulate their thoughts so clearly—I can still feel the rush of adrenaline. I was a writer. I had taken on the i

I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s. I remember in particular a Swedish forum where my neighbor and I would go to read about filmmaking. I had never written in public, and I would not have dared to do it in real life, but this felt more like a video game. Everyone had wild, colorful pseudonyms. There were no faces. We thought it would be fun to pretend that we were a grown up, so we made a user, spun up a backstory, and began debating people. I wrote things using what I thought of as an adult voice, going on for hundreds of words a