Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

What's in a name?

While I was frittering away my time up North, Steven Den Beste triggered a debate on psuedonym blogging [I could fix that spelling, but I think I'll just leave it there so you can make fun of me - Ed.]. Since my weird monicker came up in the discussion a few times, I might as well outline my own position on the subject.

Steven and others suggested that those of who aren't forthcoming about our identity sacrifice our credibility. We are less likely to convince others to share our point of view, especially when we may be assuming or exaggerating our own beliefs behind the protection of our on-screen identity. His argument goes more to anonymous blogs and emailers, but he seems to suggest similar drawbacks for those of us with Pseudonyms.

Do we really hope to achieve wholesale changes in others' opinions with weblogs? Having participated in this medium since last September 30, I Don't really see weblogs working that way. Opinions evolve, and exposure to others assists in that process, so it is incorrect to say they don't at least influencepublic debate (memo to self - someday I should describe how my political and economic outlook changed whilst studying among the wackos in New Haven). You can obtain useful facts and points of view from other blogs. They can expose you to whole new issues you haven't thought about. But I'm not sure the personal credibility required of political or religious leadership is necessary to a thought-provoking weblog.

Instapundit once remarked (approximately), if you aren't doing this for yourself, you're nuts. Weblogs are as personal as they are public, perhaps more personal. I find writing things down clarifies my own thoughts. They also allow me to save a link for later. I enjoy the process of cataloguing my thoughts and those of others in this way. A weblog is kind of like an annotated, and therefore much more useful, bookmark. That function certainly has nothing to do with public identity.

You may have noticed I use the handle "Mindles H. Dreck". My own reasons are as follows

1. To perform a sort of blogging jujitsu by adopting the garbled invective of an irrational critic as my nom de plume.

2. Protecting my firm and disassociating it from my personal opinions

I wish to keep as much distance as possible between my professional life and my blogging hobby. As a professional and an NASD/SEC registered representative, the expression of certain types of opinion are regulated, both by law and by my employer.

The regulatory aspect is pretty simple - I can't express opinions on securities or offer investment advice without supervision and approval by the compliance mechanism of my firm. So I don't offer any here - the pseudonym helps separate my opinions from those of the firm, but the prohibition on investment advice or marketing is absolute. I wouldn't deliver investment advice or talk about my company here even if the site were encrypted and you knew me only by a number. I'm not using anonymity to cover something unethical.

One of the strange aspects of businesses in general, and securities businesses in particular is they like to have as few official opinions on public or political matters as possible. Opinions provide few profit opportunities (as any revenue-seeking pundit will tell you) yet create plenty of risks. As anybody who keeps a blog knows, offense is easily taken. I don't need that anger directed at my colleagues or my company.

Notice that the individuals expressing controversial opinions at major companies are always the CEO, majority owner or an otherwise indispensable employee (like Mike Milken was at Drexel, or Felix Rohatyn at Lazard or Bruce Wasserstein at First Boston years ago)

I began searching for a pseudonym when I received an offer from a major newspaper to turn one of my posts into an op-ed piece. It was a moment of supreme irony. I had produced some decent commentary, and that, combined with the credibility of my professional position, made it attractive to a major media outlet. DAMN, I couldn't do it. There was a slight possibility that a small group of people we do business with would have objected to it, as I was criticizing practices within their industry (as well as my own).

I like my job. I like my firm. I like most of my colleagues, including many with whom I disagree routinely on lots of bloggable topics. This is my blog, and they should neither suffer from it nor enjoy credit for it to any degree. My professional voice, under my real name, is heard through other avenues.

Like Asparagirl, I draw a distinction between a pseudonym and pure anonymity. Plenty of information about me is on the blog, and most people who correspond with me by email know exactly who I am, including, among those actively discussing this topic,Steven, Jane, Glenn and Asparagirl. Jane and Asparagirl have even been in my home and met my two year-old son and my cat. I've met dozens of other bloggers face to face, including but not limited to Matt Welch and his wife Emmanuelle, Ken Layne, Virginia Postrel, Tony Pierce, Rand Simberg, Diane Moon, Jay Zilber, Ken Goldstein, Nick Marsala, HappyfunSteve, Clay Waters, "Jim", Dr. Weevil and Eugene Volokh.

All that being said, I enjoyed it more when I was using my own name and wasn't really thinking about all this.

Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at August 29, 2002 6:18 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>