"What's in a name?"

There is a good joke about so-called anonymity on the Internet:

“Putin at an online press conference.
“I just received a good question via the Internet: “Aren’t you tired, Vova, of answering anonymous questions on the Internet?”
I’m answering the owner of IP 195.58.60.15, host mtu-net.ru, MTU-Inform provider, Sergei Vladimirovich Ivanov, who asked this question, living on Kartoshkina Street 13/2, apartment 112. Don’t be fooled!”

So let's clarify the concepts. Anonymous is a text whose author is not specified and cannot be identified. Experts say that up to 80-90% of “anonymous” Internet users can be identified.

Consequently, for the most part we are not anonymous, and almost all of our nicknames are pseudonyms. Nick - from the English nickname - nickname, nickname, reflecting some real (not formal) qualities of a person related to his origin, place of residence, personality traits, beliefs, etc. Modern online nicknames, unlike nicknames, people can choose for themselves , just as writers chose pseudonyms, trying to express their destiny, ideals and/or hide their real name in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from many dangers. Since Russia has turned from the “most reading” country into the “most writing” country in the world, the writer’s pseudonym has become a mass phenomenon.

When officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs speak out against “anonymity” on the Internet, it is clear that this is a response to protest actions - this is necessary to persecute their organizers and inspirers on the Internet. When Patriarch Kirill and Fr. talk about this. Vsevolod Chaplin, everything also seems to be clear: they are irritated by both anti-Pu and anti-Gu. But I still wanted to remind you where anonymity and pseudonymity came from in this country. After all, nicknames are the heirs of a great tradition. Yes, sir.

The key moment in biblical history was the meeting of Moses with God on Mount Sinai, where God revealed his Name to the future leader of Israel, which is still not pronounced out loud in official Judaism (and in any biblical tradition it cannot be mentioned “in vain”), but is replaced by other names (theonyms) – Lord, Elohim, Adonai. Orthodoxy also has an idea of ​​the sacredness of the name of Jesus Christ, the repetition of which in prayer leads to the purification of the soul. Christians know many other biblical names of Christ - Savior, Messiah, Redeemer, Logos, Vine, etc., which reveal various facets of his personality, nature and earthly path. The Theotokos' name book (onomasticon) is richly developed in the names of Orthodox icons - “Support of Sinners”, “Seeking the Lost”, “Unexpected Joy” and many, many others. Thus, the plurality of names and the tradition of calling by another name lie in the “foundations of Orthodox culture.” Literally.

The Saints of the Russian Land and the entire Pax Christiana are entirely under “pseudonyms”: Basil the Great, John the Evangelist, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov...

Specialists in medieval culture usually praise the anonymity of the art of that time as a sign of the artist’s humility before the Creator of the Universe. I remember the words of an artist I knew, spoken in a completely medieval spirit: “I would like to paint a picture and not give it my name. Let her live her life, independent of me." Amazing! Let us free ourselves from artistic and intellectual possessiveness. We received talent for free - let’s give the fruits of it to people for free, let’s release a word, image, idea into the world and rejoice if they bring benefit to someone. In the same spirit, the Convention of Catholic Priests and Bloggers in May 2011 condemned the practice of copyright on the Internet. Let your own name not be the name of the owner... Free yourself from the thirst for possession (Nikita Sergeevich, you are our Orthodox! Do you hear?).

Since ancient times, knowing a person's name meant power over him. Monks were freed from the power of the sinful world through the renunciation of their worldly name. Present your tugament, “Your Holiness” (which is also a ceremonial nickname), since you are against anonymity and at the same time with the police, who want to demand passports from all users. You have a different name in your passport - Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, from which you freed yourself in order to renounce worldly sinful worries and passions and become free in Christ. Happened? Somehow not very good. But they probably tried, and for that they called themselves Kirill, but then for some reason they added the surname Mikhailov to the name (this, as you know, is the nickname of the State Security agent). To complete the picture, probably to reveal the versatility of your personality.

And we, sinners, want to free ourselves from worldly dependence, but for real: from the power of the authorities, who strive to buy our souls and send us to Poklonnaya; from a state that is accustomed to total control over us under the threat of the Gulag; from teachers who follow pages on social networks, etc., etc. We finally have a virtual square where everyone can go out and say what they think, say not into the void, but to the whole world and, most importantly (! ) – hear the answer. Scream about trouble - and get help. Moan in pain - and evoke sympathy. Free yourself from “slavery to this world” - and embrace your like-minded people, free people, in the real square. Understand the difference between the Moscow Patriarchate and Christ - and find real brothers in faith, and not with a VIP pass to the KhHS.

Don't you like the Internet as a collection of sins? Then ban the Bible, in which, as Erich Auerbach rightly noted, man is represented in all the highest and lowest. The World Wide Web is a mirror of humanity. She has her own vertical from hell to heaven. And everyone chooses in it what is close to him. Study people, think about them, but do not teach about the harm of xenophobia, violence and debauchery until you have cleansed your department of these sins. Start with Radio Radonezh, where Ivan the Terrible and Stalin are revered almost as saints, and Catholics and Protestants are called servants of the devil. Is this not propaganda of violence and xenophobia?

The heir to the Soviet machine of violence is the modern state, of which you are the high priest and to which you can easily sacrifice any of us. And this violence prefers to be anonymous. Hides ends in archives and safes. We still don’t know the name of the one who gave the order to shoot at a school in Beslan, to poison Litvinenko, to kill Anna Politkovskaya, to kill Magnitsky... This is from the sickest today, and the list of anonymous terror would take many volumes. In response, the elusive avengers of Anonymous appear online and open the mail of the “nashi” underground. And this is not an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, but nonviolent resistance, mind you.

The secular authorities have their own masquerade, their own cryptonyms with allonyms (mysterious and alien names). Lenin and Stalin are boring classics of a political pseudonym, now new gaming techniques from the arsenal of the country's chief intelligence officer, the Stasi, are in use. He does not demean himself to the virtual world; he has living toys. At first, it took me a long time to choose a nickname between Ivanov and Medvedev. Finally chose and lived under the pseudonym DAM for four years. Yes, so skillfully that many mistook his nickname for a real person. The “Take yourself a living nickname” campaign fully developed before the elections and turned into a human shield of the candidate from speaking pseudonyms: Alisa Freindlikh, Evgeny Mironov, Oleg Tabakov, Evgeny Khazanov and the crying Chulpan Khamatova. What names! Allonyms-homonyms! Yazapu sound the same, but each with its own special connotation.

There are also many people on the Internet who use fictitious and other people’s names in order to manipulate people, deceive them and tempt them. There is someone to learn from. Kremlin school. Only the scale of network manipulators is smaller; they do not play with the whole country.

State, what's in my name? Registration? A fortress chain with which your subject is chained to a radiator at an address known to you? My family? Job? Life? Names, like times, are not chosen. From birth, a person is tied by name to an anonymous bureaucratic machine, just as the Lilliputians tied Gulliver to the earth with numerous threads - so tightly that this giant could not move. In Swift, the Lilliputians are a symbol of state baseness and cruelty, and Gulliver is the embodiment of the power and greatness of man.

Against the background of the alienation of people from the state, they are alienated from civil names, registered, numbered and placed under control by the state machine. Russia is renaming itself, people themselves give themselves new names, free from state accounting, expressing in them and through them their thoughts, feelings, ideals and protest freely, without regard to bosses and besogons. A process of mass renaming is underway, the scale and significance of which few people understand, but the authorities are already afraid. Behind this process one can see a radical transformation of the consciousness of society, the birth of a new author's name and new relationships between people. An anonymous blogger is assessed not by his family, hierarchical, professional or property status (no familism/nepotism, no power vertical, no ranks, no awards), he is not greeted by his social “clothes”, but immediately by his intelligence, expressiveness, imagination, ingenuity , dynamism, etc.

Young people widely use Internet nicknames in live communication, because a new name is not imposed on them from the outside, but was chosen as an act of self-expression. The nicknames of many popular bloggers are better known to people than their family names, even if they do not hide the latter. Active name creation (by the way, the richest material for the study of personal identity) sometimes leads to the fact that a person begins to perceive his official full name as a false name, that is, literally a pseudonym. Like any free process, naming is full of risks, but this is life, not a registration of life, a flow, not a passport. It needs to be comprehended, and not suppressed; it has already spread across a wide field of culture and is filling the free Net community with new logins.