Here it is: I want to be able to present myself online the same way I do in real life, and who I am often depends on where I am and who I’m with. Sure, I have a core personality. But I (and everyone else) have different personae.

• I am this one guy when I am talking to a roomful of healthcare professionals about medical tourism.
• I am another guy when I’m fixing a computer network or delousing a PC.
• I am yet another guy when I am writing and researching a book on sexual culture.
• I’m still yet another guy when … well, you get the idea.

And, online, I mostly have to be all those things at once. Sure, there are some ways around it. I have different web sites, different e-mail addresses; sometimes I rely on the pseudoanonymity of screen names. It’s not that I have anything in particular to hide — it’s that not all information needs to be available all the time. And I like to fine-tune what is available, be as nuanced as possible (and sometimes as brief as possible) in any giving setting. I do it about as well as it can be done, given the lack of appropriate tools.

FaceBook TRIES to address this by allowing you to place your friends into groups. Some can see all. Others can see some. And strangers can see anything from nothing to everything. But the privacy tools are ham-handed, clumsy.

What is needed, really, is a way to define myself in different ways, as opposed to a way to define my friends.

So the next really big, insanely great idea is a social networking site that will allow you to define different personae for yourself. Prisms.

There is a basic profile — how you would introduce yourself to anyone. “Hi I’m Jeff Schult. I’m a writer.”

Then I would have the corporate persona, available to people/and or web sites to whom I relate to that way. NOT necessarily available to Google, NOT necessarily searchable. Maybe I would list the persona on my main profile. Probably I would. But maybe I wouldn’t.

Then I might have my geek persona; my writer persona; my musician persona; my family persona; my flirting persona. Etc. And these would only be available to people and/or other web sites via my own choice; but would be controlled through one site, one interface.

My party animal persona — you know, the one that is demonized for college kids, the one where they post drunken, nude photos of themselves having sex while doing bong hits? No one could see that unless they were in my party animal persona tribe, which would be pretty damned small and trustworthy, by the way. There would be no hint that it even existed, to any potential employer or my mom and dad.

Get it?

Well, I bet some people do.

If anyone has some venture money and wants to hire me to help build the successor to Facebook, you know where to find me.

And I finally figured out why. The fatal flaw of both is embedded in the genius of both. Much of the commercial history of the Internet is about companies trying to PUSH. Push technology. Push information. Push anything and everything. The most interesting thing about PUSH is that companies keep doing it even though consumers, demonstrably want PULL. Let me choose what I want. Let me pick. Let me PULL what I want. Don’t jam things down my throat.

But FaceBook and Twitter have succeeded with PUSH because they’ve gotten consumers to accept PUSH … from their friends and from other consumers.

Increasingly, we are serving up our thoughts, conversations and information on FaceBook and in Twitter messages to our friends and other consumers in ways that these companies can monetize our communications.

And in the end, there is a limit to it. We’re creeped out by PUSH. I don’t know when we will hit the limit, but the backlash from early adopters has already started.

There is a cheery little plugin called “Hello Dolly” and you, dear reader, cannot see what it does, because all it does is display random lyrics from Louis Armstrong’s classic song in the top right of my blog administration screens. Some people complain about this plugin and call it “useless.” These people lack joie de vivre (let’s see what Global Translator does with that …) “Hello Dolly” is, in fact, the first-ever plugin written for WordPress. So it was kind of a test, presumably.

But even people with joie de vivre, such as myself, can get a little tired of seeing random snatches of “Hello Dolly” lyrics at the top of their screens, right? I was strangely reluctant to disable the plugin though … I have this thing about using software if it is at my disposal. Finally, it occurred to me that I would be happier if I had a choice of song lyrics.

So I rewrote the “Hello Dolly” plugin using the lyrics from “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. It was pretty simple to do, and for now, I am the only one in the world, probably, whose WordPress admin screen says, at the top right, “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name …”

My little hack of “Hello Dolly” is absolutely no more useful than the original. But what the hell. Maybe I’m in need of … some restraint. (woo woo, woo woo.)

Maybe I’ll make it available for download if anyone wants it.

Update: I did that little thing. Here’s the page at WordPress:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sympathy-for-the-devil/

I hope Mick and Keith will leave me alone now. Fifty four downloads as of May 2, woohoo …

And … April 11. They did it. Rachel’s photo is gone, Debi’s is now PG. No more Yahoo adult profiles.

(original post below)

I almost feel bad for for Jami, the Groups Community Manager at Yahoo. Over at the Yahoo Groups Blog, she gets to sign her name to the “clarification” about yesterday’s announcement to members that Yahoo is doing away with “Adult” profiles. (This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post.)

First of all, as we said yesterday: The e-mail is/was NOT a hoax, despite anything else you may have read elsewhere. Second, Yahoo says that eliminating adult profiles will NOT affect Adult Groups. But Jami, meaning Yahoo, hasn’t yet responded to a lot of follow-up questions and comments. (Check the comments yourself here.)

Here’s what we know:

1) Yahoo, on April 9, is deleting ALL photos on Adult Profiles. It doesn’t matter if your photo is of a lovely sunset, or of a puppydog. They deleting them all. You can upload another one if you want, but it cannot have “Mature Content” or it will be deleted. So yes, Yahoo is going to censor profiles, which is a line they need to be VERY careful of … because if they are getting into the censoring/deleting game, a judge, somewhere along the line, could hold them responsible for user content and they’d be more liable, not less, than they are today for all the webcam girl photos on their site.

2) On April 9, if you have an Adult Profile, it will not be an Adult Profile anymore. Besides losing the photos, the adult designation will disappear. Your Adult Profile will be just a regular ol’ profile, even if you’ve described in detail every single sexual fantasy you’ve ever had or want to have. As long as there are no “mature” pictures, you’re OK. For now, at least … though Yahoo isn’t defining what it thinks might be “mature content” yet, other than saying that all the photos are gfoing to be scrubbed on April 9.

3) Jami says:

Adult groups themselves, including their photos, will NOT be affected in any way.

That’s their story and so far they are sticking to it. Anyone buy it? Not me, not so far. Yahoo has a long history of, to use the technical phrase, “fucking around” with groups, including having deleted adult groups from its search directory in 2001.

More as it develops …

(Previous Post)

Minor Update: I’ve unchecked “adult” on my own profile. I’ve managed to ascertain that having an adult profile is *not* necessarily a prerequisite for being a member of an adult group — though some have required it. So … we’ll see what happens.

From my inbox, two minutes ago:

“We’re making some changes that will affect one of your Yahoo! profiles. After April 9, 2008, mature content will not be
permitted within Yahoo! Profiles. In accordance with this new policy, users will no longer be able to designate an ‘adult profile,’ and mature content will be removed. The profile for the Yahoo! ID scribblerbot is marked ‘adult.’ The picture associated with this profile will be removed and deleted on April 9, 2008.”

This is goddamn big news, for a number of reasons. Yes, I have a Yahoo adult profile and it has a photo on it. It’s the one in this blog post. As you can see, it may not be the greatest photo in the world, but it is not a nude photo of me or of any nekkid body parts. (None of your business as to whether I have any, either. )

1.) I know that there are, oh, about a bazillion people who have adult profiles because they belong to Yahoo groups for which Yahoo has REQUIRED a Yahoo Adult Profile, because the group has adult content.

Yes, this includes a LOT of groups dedicated to ogling nude photographs. However, because Yahoo has been amazingly prissy in the past, with this whole adult-content schmear, it ALSO includes lots of people who belong to groups that are about cosmetic surgery or weight loss surgery, for example. I know about those because I belong to a bunch of these groups. It was part of my research for Beauty from Afar and I still keep track of what is going on with people who go overseas for surgery.

Some of these groups used to get closed or even deleted by Yahoo when “someone” would complain that there were nude pictures on the group pages, right where anyone could see them! Hence, these got made into “Adult” groups, meaning no kid could look at them unless, of course, he or she jumped that HUGE hurdle and clicked on a box that said “I’m more than 18 years old.” (As though that ever stopped someone.)

2. And yes, then there a whole lot of people who use their “adult profiles” to post nude photographs of themselves and/or other information in hopes of enticing Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. Right-Now will want to have sex with them. And there are a cajillion (which is not as many as a bazillion, but almost) women who have a Yahoo adult profile, or even many of them, for a single purpose: To advertise their webcam stripping activities, for which some people pay money.

Presumably, Yahoo wants to get rid of the porn-related profiles … and that’s going to be unpopular with a lot of people who will scream about censorship. I’m witholding comment on that for the moment but if you’re not, click the comment button and go to town.

My big issue, for now, is that they haven’t told me anything yet about how they are going to handle the relationship of adult profiles to adult groups, especially those groups that have nothing to do with anything that could reasonably be considered as porn. Breast Cancer Awareness groups, perhaps? Etc.

I’ll be following up … Stay tuned. (See next related post.)

(See the latest, including how to browse the soon-to-be-deleted profiles.)

And … April 11. They did it. No more Yahoo adult profiles.