Pseudonymity Reconsidered

I've been reconsidering some of my pseudonyms lately. And wondering how far pseudonymity will take you when you would prefer that your efforts were all related, connected and coherent.

The primary moniker I use for producing music, Instigator, has proven too ubiquitous. I adopted it eight years ago and am the oldest listing for artists named "Instigator", for the record. The bigger point is that I think I've outgrown it. I argue with myself about whether Instigator was supposed to do anything but get my solo production efforts underway. Things have been instigated well enough (the ambitious "Used Materials" album, and the fruitful Noise Throng label). It's time for the name, like the creative product itself, to move beyond the beginning-stage mentality.

This is what I did with INSTILLE, a name derived from the portmanteau of Instigator and Distille.

But getting my musical monikers in order inevitably leaves me reconsidering my PYLBUG moniker, too. A misspelling of pillbug, inspired by a dream about an abundance of insects and pills as interchangeable objects, it's been my handle for extra-curricular productions since 1995. Sometimes, however, I find myself wary of the connotations "pylbug" brings.

I am not, for the record, a pill-head any more than I am an insect aficionado. [Though I'm definitely much closer to the latter.] The reasoning by which I arrived at "pylbug" doesn't always hold up now, nearly 13 years later. Many of my extra-curricular efforts now seem inspired by different things, and this makes me feel like they should go by a different name. I'm considering a revised strategy to naming my projects; a refined point-of-view. Something like that.

All of that is for me to figure out. But, here's the question for my readers: where does your pseudonym come from, and did you plan any longevity into it? Maybe this question is more for bands, bloggers, content producers in general... people with a product that needs a brand name, if you will. What thought, if any, did you put into the act of picking your favorite pseudonym?

That is, if you can reveal the secrets behind your screen names.

How Microsoft Might Suffocate Google

MIT Adverlab today has a post called How To Kill Google. It cites The Reluctant Blogger's very interesting "doomsday" scenario in which "Microsoft could crush Google in one easy step".

Nothing against Google (this post is on Google-owned Blogger after all), but I grow weary of seeing more and more space in my browser filled with text ads.

In the days since Reluctant Blogger's first post, he's received a lot of feedback and summarized it in this "Microsoft vs. Google" post.

Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

Kurt Vonnegut died at age 84.
His "profound pessimism" and sharp wit were inspirational to me.

77 Drum Kits! Eye!

PICT0274
Originally uploaded by silverfuture.

A fitting 77th post* for me. A friend at VICE just reminded me about the Boredoms' 77 Drum performance. It's happening on July 7th (7/7/07) in NYC.

Maybe Eye will see you there.

* If you count, you'll end up with fewer than 77. A few posts haven't been published yet, but Blogger assures me this is post 77.

Revamped

You may notice a few subtle differences in PYLB. That's because I upgraded to the new Blogger over the past few days. And added some new links. And tags. And some other things you probably can't see yet. Excuse any little hiccups while I get everything situated.

Zombie Products = Lazarus Taxons?

I say "products" because these, not brands, are actually what Slate's Daniel Gross refers to in Zombie Brands II. (A follow-up to Zombie Brands part one -- which is also about products, not brands). For example, the McRib is a product; McDonald's is a brand. Likewise, the Taurus is a product of the Ford brand. And Tab is a product of the Coca-Cola brand (though I'm sure Coke's marketing folks might argue that Tab is a sub-brand within Coca-Cola's brand architecture). I'm calling them "zombie products" because "zombie brands" seems less correct for the majority of Gross' examples.

Now that we've gotten that clarification out of the way, I should get to my point: These zombie products are consumerism's version of the Lazarus taxon. I make note of this because in a previous PYLB post I discussed the "comeback" taxonomy seems to be making right now.

Scientific Prank Methodology

That's the term I just learned from an article in the latest issue of WIRED. The article explains how Annalee Newitz paid a service to get her incoherent, experimental blog a top rating on Digg. This, according to Newitz, was after Digg CEO Jay Adelson claimed "all the groups trying to manipulate Digg 'have failed,' and that Digg 'can tell when there are paid users.'"

It must sting to be Digg right now. But that's not the only reason I'm blogging about the article. The "cultural engineer" side of me picked up something other than the debunking of a CEO's claims.

It's interesting to read about the lemming effect that ensues once a few paid ratings are imitated by other Digg users. At a time when a lot of attention is given to the alleged usefulness of user recommendations, this is a reminder that the herd instinct is still in effect online.

Since most of us don't have the time to check the reputation of every user name we encounter ourselves, my gut tells me that we should expect to very soon see a service that recommends the best recommendations. Or, at the very least, some new sort of validation layer added to the experience of Digg. Surely, the folks at Digg must be all over it by now...

Read: "I Bought Votes On Digg"