Soulcast provides a great example of how confused people are about the likes of identity and/or anonymity.
Posting with any name - whether it be a legal name, a "real" name, or a fabricated "screen" name - is not posting anonymously. Anonymous implies the absence of a marked identity. Repeatedly associating the same name with expressions of identity (e.g. posts) renders those expressions non-anonymous.
So, this blurb on soulcast's home page is a whole lot of bunk, really:
"Your" life? Um... how can there be a "you" in the picture if it's anonymous? How can other people "get you" if there is no identifiable you?
Get it?
As a matter of fact, the use of names is precisely what makes it possible to censor and constrain. Not necessarily by a controlling central authority (although of course the soulcast gods could swoop down and bump you off at any time). But certainly by readers being selective based on past experience with screen names.
For example:
"Hmmm... a new post by OrangeOuttieLips... I think I'll skip that one because I was offended by their last post...."
Such selectivity wouldn't be possible without posts being associated with names.
In the absence of names, people would decide what to read on the merit of posts' titles/descriptions, and possibly opening paragraph.
So, be ye not (most likely self) deceived. Your posting via a soulcast screen name is anything *but* anonymous. You've simply created a new identity that (depending on how paranoid you are) hopefully is not recognizable to anyone who would recognize your "real" identity (ha ha). But you've not solved the problems/burdens of identity. If anything, you've increased the ways in which you are trapped by identity, 'cuz now you gots two instead of one.
Funny stuff.
