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daenerys comments on More "Personal" Introductions - Less Wrong Discussion
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Please place discussion about this idea/topic as a thread to this comment.
Yep.
Nope.
Neither. I provide my personal data on the LW IRC channel all the time. I don't see this as the place for that. I see this as the place for the sanest possible discourse, as uninhibited as possible by prejudice. I know it's a problem for me, since my memory is such that if I ever read a comment by someone and I really hate that comment, I will be far more likely to down-vote or ignore that person's comments in the future. (This just occurs with a few special cases, though, so it's not really enough to turn on the anti-kibitzer.)
I don't feel a need for that sort of personal intro-- I don't model people all that intensely.
I'm also not comfortable doing that sort of intro, though I'll try if it seems necessary.
Don't these tend to increase page loading times? A link to a picture may be better.
For people who use pseudonyms, would you care to explain why you chose yours? I don't necessarily mean why you're using a pseudonym at all, I'm more interested in why you chose the particular one you've got.
Pun on engineer.
That's stealthy enough that I assumed it was your real name.
I'm not using a pseudonym.
At long last, for the first time anywhere on the internet, the origin story of (the name) "arundelo"!
aaron-brown" and similar usernames were taken. Brainstorming for other options and remembering the above story, I gave "arundel" a try, but that was taken too. I was spending a fair amount of time with Esperanto at the time, so I tried adding an "o", which is what Esperanto nouns end with. "arundelo" was not taken, so that's what I chose.Since then I've used it for many other websites and have never run into anyone else who uses it. It does not function as a true pseudonym, since it's dead easy to connect it with my real name. I make no effort to keep them separate.
ah-roon-DELL-oh and air-un-DELL-oh are both acceptable pronunciations. I (mildly) prefer the first.
Mine is a math term, and my use of it dates all the way back to my religious days, when I thought of Catholic theology as a sort of orthonormal basis to my understanding of the world, helping me to see everything in its proper context. I may or may not have kept a blog with that title, which may or may not be both charming and embarrassing to my current self.
Every once in a while, I feel like I need a new identity, like when my personality has shifted a lot or when I notice an aspect of myself I'd like to express, but can't merge with any existing identity. I then choose a name and go by that. So I don't think of "muflax" as a pseudonym, but the actual name of the personality "muflax" in my head.
muflax is simply mu + flax. I like the look of the name. It doesn't have a preferred pronunciation (I don't speak it unless absolutely necessary), but someone once thought it looked like "a Turkish medication", so I recommend a thick Turkish accent.
I've used "Alicorn" practically as long as I can remember. The fantasy-geek variant on being a horse crazy little girl is being a unicorn crazy little girl, and I was rather enamored with my vocabulary too. Started using "Alicorn" as one among several screen names and eventually stuck with it over all the others.
I use it elsewhere, including sometimes in real life. Here are the general reasons I chose the name:
You don't want to choose a name that starts with a vowel, because they are hard to understand. For example if I said "I'm Arya," or "My name's Arya." A good percentage of people would confuse where the name actually started and hear "I'm Marya" (Maria) or "My name's Sarya" (maybe Soraya?). (I learned this the hard way a couple years ago with a different name) So you want your name to either be very common, or to start with a clear consonant.
Having an unusual name allows the person you are talking to to ask you about it. It allows them to start a conversation with you ("Daenerys? That's an unusual name. Where did you get it?")
Having a name that is an somewhat-rare reference to something interesting causes people to feel an instantaneous kinship with you if they happen to "get it". Unfortunately, this hasn't worked too well for me, as I've only met a handful of people IRL who caught the reference when I introduced myself.
As to what the reference is to, it's to one of my favorite book series; "Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin. I actually like the character Arya better, but I've already mentioned why that name won't work. Daenerys is a bad-a$$ chick with an army and dragons. It works. :)
Unfortunately, it makes you essentially impossible to google. (It may also be a feature, of course.)
Alicorn and I were both immediately inclined to like you when you started commenting, due to the name =)
'rysade' is just 6 characters I strung together one day. It is always a lower case 'r' on the front. I've used this name for so long, I basically consider it to be another way of giving my full name on the internet. To my chagrin, it looks like my old Xanga account is the first result from a Google search . . . that is very old.
The name has no particular pronunciation. I think of it as being similar to 'xkcd' in that Randall once explained that 'xkcd' is "a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings."
You'll find googling 'rysade' to usually return me, and also some very obscure pages in what I think is Russian if you go back far enough. If it is, or ever was, a word in any language, it is certainly not a common one.
Sometimes I'll add an 'h' on the end. Echoing many other posters ITT, I use that version for roleplay characters on occasion. 'Rysadeh' has a pronunciation: rye-SAW-deh, with an emphasis on the 'eh' at the end as well, giving it an abrupt end.
I enjoy creating unusual characters and character names -- I used to do this more, when I sometimes GM'ed at a .hack// roleplaying forum. Dorikka is just a name that I came up with for a boss creature. I liked the name, so I continued to use it. shrug
The only name use that originates from somewhere else is Miroki, which is a modification of Mitsuko Souma's name from Battle Royale, a book that I really liked. I don't think I've ever used Miroki as a psuedonym before, though, only a character.
I'm somewhat conflicted about this. I enjoy this stuff, but I'm probably not going to contribute. Writing personal stories always feels like narcissism, and I'm very unsure if I'm ever creating anything of value with it.
Also, I'm actually quite boring as a person, and reading about others is a decent substitute for having an interesting life. It substantially reduces my need to be awesome, at least in some areas. I'm not sure if this bothers me, as it also removes all the hard work, so I might actually be better off. For a simple example, I feel Reddit has pretty much covered my need to own a cat, without having to care for one. This seems like a good deal. I'm not sure how strong this substitution is, or if its good on net.
I'm going to narcicassate myself by indicating I agree. My senior year of high school we did a Memory Book project where we gather photos of trips and write essays about our lives thus far. Mine was mostly just essays because not many photos of me exist. I ended up with a C because I cut up all the family photos of me that my parents had and went through all the pics my friends owned as well and only had enough photos for half a book.
I wrote one, but I don't really see the need. I come here for ideas, not people. I've met a LessWronger IRL where I live, and we're working on becoming friends, which is great, but this isn't really a social networking site.
This confuses me.
It was partially boredom, and partially the thought that just because I'm not going to go through reading other people's introductions doesn't mean that there aren't people who want to read mine. If other people want to know more about me, I'm happy to share a little bit.
Tips for Making Good Introductions
(Note: A lot of this info can be extrapolated to sites like OKC)
I think there are some really great intros posted, and I really appreciate everyone participating. I would love to read more. I thought maybe it would be useful, and encourage more people to post, if I put up some pointers. Feel free to add more of your own pointers!
1) Avoid overly-general comments that are likely be true of the vast majority of your audience. They don't really give any information. Examples for LW might include: I like rationality and AI. I like to read. I am in a STEM field.
2) DO get specific. Instead of saying "I like music" say "Watching Fiona Apple perform gives me the shivers". Instead of saying "I like gaming", say "My favorite board games are Alea Iacta Est, Smallworld, and Oregon, and I am a cheap date, in that I enjoy spending dates gaming or reading"
3) Mix things that make you fit in, and things that make you stand out.
3a) Things that make you fit in- You want your audience to relate to you. A good way to do this when they see things you wrote and think "Me too!". However, we still need to get specific (aka an "I like music" won't elicit a "Me too!" response, it will elicit a "Duh! So does everyone" response). To be able to mention specific things that you think other people will relate to, you really have to know your audience. Some perfect examples of this include:
and
These are both specific and very relatable.
(Hope people are ok with me quoting them as examples. If not, let me know)
3b) Things that make you stand out- If you fit in completely with everyone else, none of your uniqueness is going to come through. People will consider you "Just another average LW-er/ OKC-er/ whatev-er". For this, think of what are some things that are relatively unique to you. If you are lucky, a couple people will relate personally to them too. This is actually GREAT when it happens. Some good examples:
and
4) Readability- Make sure everything is easy to understand. Break long paragraphs up! Short paragraphs are easier to read, less likely to be skimmed. Anything longer than about 5-6 lines on here, just throw a paragraph break in. Even if you think it doesn't belong!
5) Topics- Most of a personal introduction falls under the small-talk category. This is difficult for a lot of people because they don't know what to talk about, unless someone asks them specifically. Here's a pretty good list of ideas for things you can write about. In fact, if you ignore everything else I talked about in this comment, and just focused on answering some of these prompts, you are pretty much good to go.
PS- My goal is to encourage people to post by giving follow-able guideline, but my worry is that this post will make people nervous about posting. If you think having such intensive guidelines are more of a hindrance than a help, please let me know, so I can remove the post. Thank you!
I will upvote this iff you remove the "lol".
Would it be appropriate to say that I laughed out loud when I read this comment?
Lol has become overused, to the extent that if I actually 'laugh out loud' it no longer seems appropriate.
Yes. :D
Done! Thanks for the tip!
Your experiences with liberal studies vs engineering are interesting. I had the opposite experience. The engineering profs would give examples from their experiences and we really got to know them well. The libs people seemed boring and uneducated. But going point on knowing people making it easier to talk to them.
Also, I think there are great benefits to a community not driven by individual identity, as long as you can keep the trolling and civility under control. There's a reason 4chan is the cultural center of the internet.
I wonder if it's something that varies from school to school - those mostly known for their engineering attract high-quality engineering teacher and average liberal arts teachers, and the other way around for schools known for their liberal arts.
Hmmm, that's a really good point, and it might be correct. But here's some anecdotal evidence to the contrary: Tthe school I went to is better known for engineering, since it's right down the street from Wright Patt Air Force Base, which has a lot of the Air Force Research Labs. I did find that most of my computer teachers were way more personable than the rest of the STEM profs. I thought it was perhaps because they generally weren't "just" professors, but were Base contractors who either taught on the side or post-retirement. They were generally both brilliant, and very personable lecturers.
I wonder if this has more to do with perspective?
Theory 1- Professors are more personable in upper-level classes, than lower-level classes. I went from upper-level history to lower level engineering, and thought that the engineering profs were less personable. You went from upper-level engineering/sci/math to lower-level liberal arts (say if senior year you took a filler intro to philosophy class or something), so you thought liberal arts profs were less personable. Both of these could be explained by the difference in level, rather than the difference in field.
Theory 2- Professors are more personable to students that show promise in their particular field. Liberal arts professors don't bother being overly friendly with STEM students who are just taking their class as a filler, and engineering profs don't bother being friendly with lower skill students.
Anecdotal evidence for both of these that when I switched to Human Factors Engineering I thought the teachers were (generally) better. I thought it was because it was a more Psychology-based field, but perhaps it was because I was finally in higher level classes, and/or that I was much better at it than I was at mech.
Theory 3- It completely varies from school to school. Possibly determined by the specialty of the university, or perhaps determined by the head of the dept., who hires profs that fit their personal preferences.
Theory 4- One discipline actually does have more personable professors than the other discipline, for any number of reasons. (Education and Social Work profs are among the MOST personable that I've had. That intuitively makes sense to me.)
Can anyone find any evidence for these?
Theory 1 sounds like the atmosphere at my high school. Some of my teachers there went from boring and dismissive to interesting and friendly once you'd made the conscious choice to be in their class.
At university I found the same thing you did - in the Linguistics department the lecturers were uniformly friendly and happy to bring up tidbits about their lives, while in computer science the level of engagement was... uneven, to say the least.
This is a great idea. the LW community has great content but lacks the personal connection that makes other communities so sucessful, and this addresses it directly. It's fascinating to see what people on this site are like, what 'types' it draws and keeps.
Great introductions, everyone! Thanks! But there's still a pretty high what-I-study : who-I-am ratio. I wonder if it's because LWers tend to define themselves more by their ideas?
Edit: I did one of my own as an example. Note how it DOESN'T include what I studied, where I went to school, how I feel about school, etc.