“Naming Names”, an article from today’s NYtimes by SOMINI SENGUPTA, explores the implications of social networks and other online identity formation tools regulating users’ ability to control their image. Salman Rushdie, according to the article, was renamed Ahmed Rushdie by the Facebook team (Ahmed appears on his passport). This incensed the author, who took to Twitter demanding he be given back his public name, rather than his legal name.
In “a flurry of exasperated posts”, Rushdie called for support, and the Twitterverse responded:
Within two hours, Mr. Rushdie gleefully declared victory: “Facebook has buckled! I’m Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun.”
So, the landscape of online identity is just being wrought, but my biggest questions are these:
- Why is Salman Rushdie, one of the great literary authors of our time, putting so much emotional energy into Facebook?
- Why do Salman Rushdie’s Twitter posts seem SO juvenile?
I don’t have good answers.
Related posts:
