Technology for Fandom

I'm not going to pretend the Internet of the late 90s and early 00s was some sort of Golden Age. It had several problems, just like the Internet of 2020 has several problems. However, I feel that a particular set of rules that were drilled into us youngsters in the beginnings of the public Internet are just as relevant today, if not even more given the current fandom climate.

Ye Olde Internet Lessons

• Do not use your real name online. Certain websites, like Facebook, have a "real name only" policy, largely so they can build a better profile of you and sell it to advertisers and marketers for a higher price. As much as possible, don't use your real name. No matter how proud you are of your nerdy interests and works, people who don't understand them, or who want to use them to harm you, will look up your real name in search engines. Don't make their job easier by associating your real name and various real details about you with your fannish persona.
• Do not post your age online. Same goes for your date of birth. Some new fans believe that by identifying themselves prominently as minors, they can get adults to avoid them or give them special treament; in reality, they are painting a target on themselves, since it signals their presence to online predators and other abusers. Unlike what we were told in 1999, not everyone you meet on the internet in a child-raping serial killer out for blood; however, yeah, there are some of those people online too. Don't make it easy on them to find you.
• Do not post identifying information about yourself. This includes your address, your parent(s) and sibling(s)' names, what school you go to, where you work, when you're going on vacation, when your parents are not home, etc. As with the above, there are people that want to use this information to hurt you (the infamous doxxing, posting someone's real name, address, employer and other information to paint a target on them), but burglars are also watching out for this information so they know when no one is home.
• Do not post pictures of yourself online. Or if you do post pictures of yourself online, be wary of the information these photos might give out. Pay special attention to the background of your photos. Is the location easily identifiable? Are there details like street names, car licence plates, locally famous buildings that can be used to find out where you live? When you take a photo wiith a smartphone, the device adds exif data to the photo, including a date and time stamp and the geograpical coordinates of where the photo was taken. This data can be read by anyone with a bit of technical know-how. Here is how to purge the exif data of your photos.
• If you are meeting people you've met online in the "real world", meet in a safe, public area. Tell your parent(s), your sibling(s) or friends where you are going, at what time, and when you expect to be back. Trust your guts. If someone makes you uncomfortable, creeps you out, or seems too good to be true, they probably are.
• Everything you post on the Internet is public and accessible by all. Your Twitter, your Instagram, your Discord server might feel like your safe little corner of the Web with just you and your friends, but they are not. Everything you post online, unless the platform has specific privacy tools and you are using them correctly, is available to anyone with an connexion to the Internet. The default settings of every social media platform is to make everything public to the largest audience and broadcast everything to everybody without regards for consequences. When you post something, you are screaming into the void, and the void has ears and is listening.

This may read like paranoia. Heck, when I was taught these myself in my late teens, I thought these were kinda exaggerated. I'm not telling you to have zero presence online and never communicate with anyone, because what is fandom if no one shares anything, right? Just, maybe, think twice about the necessity of posting certain things online, or disclosing personal information. Most people are good and want to have harmless fun. But for those few who want to hurt people because that's their idea of fun, don't make the task easy on them by giving them everything about you on a silver platter.