Subject: Aliases y Hitomi (was Re: Answer to: What happened to Hitomi?)
From: Lizsue
Date: 8/31/1997, 2:40 PM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

At 07:17 PM 8/30/1997 -0400, Phoney wrote:
Well, Hitomi sure was a CONVINCING persona...reacting in a perfectly
feminine way to my male piggishness..

There are these fakers EVERYWHERE on the net..we've unmasked a few
ourselves on IRC .. one guy had been having a freakin' AFFAIR with
one..he left irc in DISGUST when the truth came out..

Check out http://www.fringeware.com/fwr/fwr04-30.html .

By the way, I guess it's a bit lime.

I wonder if these dudes have any shame. ^^

I could be wrong, but it sure sounds like a handle. 

Ichinohei IS an alias...this was casually revealed to me a 
LOOONG time ago.  I didn't think it meant that Hitomi didn't exist, just 
that it was someone else like her, only using a different name.

Well, as a list member using an alias, maybe I should say something.

Yes, I am the same Lizsue as the former lizsue@mtc.ultranet.com, not some 
joker who stole her ID.  I really am a female teenager and M.I.T. student.  
I just don't want to use my real name (searching for "lizsue" on the M.I.T. 
web page doesn't give you my name, major, dorm room number, etc. because I'm 
one of the people who has it blocked) because of some nasty stuff that 
happened a few years ago:

Shortly after I got my Ultranet account, I posted a question to 
news:alt.history.what-if about Chinese explorers colonizing the Americas and 
reaching the East Coast by the time European explorers got there.  How would 
the Chinese and British contingents react to each other?

A short while later, I got a long garbage rant in my emailbox full of
genocidal bile.  To make a long story short, I was terrified.  And really 
glad that these homicidal wackos did not know my real name; it was now that 
much harder for them to track me down in real life if they happened to be 
local (I don't need net.nazis standing on my doorstep trying to figure out 
whether or not I match their idea of a master race).  So I try to keep that 
RLName/eName connection - and my color while I'm at it - off the Internet as 
much as possible.

Also, lately a lot of Internet-privacy advice has included hiding the fact 
that you are female (to avoid harassment in chat rooms).  I wouldn't be 
surprised if a guy used a feminine alias in a mostly-female and/or feminist 
forum (no matter how well-mannered the men are and how many women accept 
that guys are in the discussion, there's always a whiner or two saying that 
men are taking over even if it's not true).

       Still, I am a little bitter about this, as are the people who
devulged personal stuff to 'Hitomi'. A handle is fine, but to not admit
it--is not a very nice thing to do. ESPECIALLY considering what happened a
year or so ago with the April Fool's Joke Hitomi Incident!! That makes me
smolder a little.

Yah, they take it a little far..

       I once asked Grimreaper(another friend) what he thought I was like,
and one of those characteristics was 'innocent'. I was skeptical about that,

I wouldn't say you're innocent or naive..I am curious though, how long
have you used the 'net?  If you haven't been on it for more than a year
or two, it's easy to believe that people are who they say they are (I know!
cause i got suckered like this too!).  Eventually though, ya learn to
take everything with a grain of salt..even people's identities.  This is
unfortunate because there are so many opportunities on the net, but you have
to be paranoid because of only a few sickos..

signed,pnt