I’ve happened upon what appears to be a legacy convention of adding a specific character string to a post, which appears to the post’s readers as each reader’s individua user name. This string literally rifles through the interwebs to identify the user who is innocently scrolling past said note or post and who stops there for a moment to read something in the words, and brings back their user name. In my case, I saw “Cori”, in words that were inside a restack of someone’s work I’d never seen or read before.
To say I was startled is a gross understatement. Why would a stranger use my name in a post or note? To quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “I say who (uses my name), I say when (they use it).”
This is not to be confused with a tag, which feels appropriate in that someone who knows me gives me a nudge to check out something I might like, or to share credit with me in something they are writing. They KNOW ME! They are not some random stranger who thought that individualizing a line or two of a post would pull me into a more ‘personal experience with them’.
Today, I’d like to have feedback from my readers about what you think of this practice.
NOTE: I strongly recommend you read this at Substack online or in the Substack App to get the full experience. I am unable to test the invocation of your name before I publish this because the test emails cannot be read in Substack, because this is not yet posted. The workaround I’m using is to replace the string with “{your name}” in some places below and to leave the string in other places, so both email readers and Substack readers will get the idea. If you read in email, there will be blanks where I used the actual character string.
I’ll share some sample images of what I’ve seen in Substack below, but for now I’ll refer to you all in this next paragraph by replacing “you” or “we” or “they'‘ with the string-invoked name, so you can personally appreciate how this feels.
I am very interested in {first name} perspective, as many of my family and friends feel I’m overreacting to this. And, that it is no different than YouTube or Amazon or other companies using private information to ‘determine’ habits, likes, purchases, or watch history to throw {first name} some new ideas about what might like. Some of those practices are a convenience boost - but BEWARE, the more it deems to ‘know ’, the more it throws {first name} way, slowly feeding what might like, therefore steering to be like what it thinks. Phew (wiping sweat from brow), that’s an obnoxious mouth full of {first name}!
That’s quite enough of that! You get the idea, amiright?!
See, here’s where I land on this. I wrote this note this morning, after having experienced this twice and gotten into a tiny debate about whether or not it’s like any other ‘normal’ conversation you have in which you use a person’s name. I report, you decide.
A stranger catching my eye with my name as I scroll past in the feed is not a friend or anyone I’ve ever met or used my name with. I’ve recently been comparing our digital life with analog, or real life, where people are present and looking into each other’s eyes while conversing. If a complete stranger walked past our table in a coffee shop and spoke my name and began spouting a post or their thoughts about this or that I would be equally taken aback. It feels two ways to me, neither one good.
Who are you? I don’t know you. Why are you calling my name? That’s creepy. Are you doing it in a subtitle just to drive up open rate? Insidious!
And/or like an ad. Like YouTube and other streaming channels all up in my business and shoving their suggestions in my face (developed from lurking around my personal life) about what I might want next.
Now, let’s go back to the coffee shop. It’s a drone-like person (like the bee kind of drone) just wandering aimlessly amongst the tables randomly speaking strangers’ names followed by something they think said strangers might want to know. No. Just NO. That’s nothing like normal communication.
While I’m considering this matter, I mute these people in the feed, like turning down my radio volume during loud ads. But, the more I ponder it, the more inclined I am to start blocking them simply because there’s zero reason I should be any more comfortable with this here on the interwebs than I would be in a real life coffee shop.
Here are the two examples I mentioned above.
See the Storm Psychology cover pic in this image, with my name in the subtitle because I looked NOT even at their post, but at codecrackx15 note about their post. Brazen!!!
See “My dear Cori,” in the middle of this snip from Riza post, who wrote an excellent post and has been an amazingly good sport in a debate with me about this practice.
Here’s what I’d like to know:
Have you seen this in your digital life? If so, where and what was the setting?
How do you receive it? Hell to the no, shrug no big deal, love it - my name is my anthem, or some other way…
Have you become comfortable with strangers calling out to you in a crowd? Or, to use the example I gave my nephew who had a howling laugh at my expense, strangers showing up uninvited and unannounced in your kitchen to give you a hot tip or urge you to act on something?
Is there anything in today’s post that made you stop to think?
Are you second-guessing your previous experience/comfort level with this phenomenon?
Hmph!! (tugging shirt hem down briskly) My thoughts on this are none of your damned business!
Answer me, darn it! LOL. Please join the debate here.
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