Any game or service that requires a number I refuse to use when possible. I don't care if I "miss out", I still respect myself enough to want my privacy.
I remember the days where you were told to NEVER give ANY identifying information about yourself online. The days where your online safety wasn't about mean words being said on some forum you voluntarily went to, but about ensuring your information wasn't being taken by some creep.
Now everyone posts every fucking detail of their life and it's honest to god saddening. It's not even about the "people are tracking me crap", even though that is true (what the fuck do you think marketing is other than tracking information?), it's about the sheer vanity of it all.
And what's worse is that people share this information about themselves in order to be treated differently, and it doesn't even matter if it's negative or positive treatment. Anonymity is the greatest equaliser there could possibly be, and every time you reveal even innocuous information about yourself, you're expecting that information to result in different treatment. A common example of this is people that start something like "As an [insert demographic here]", a simple yet effective line to try and get people to hold more value as to what you say than what you're actually saying holding the value.
Even me saying "I remember the days where....." is helping lend weight to my words because somehow me being there could mean my words are more important, but it doesn't actually make that much difference.
Every entity that wants more information from you is seeking to treat you differently. To exploit you in some manner, for good or for bad (eg "This person is so trustworthy, listen to them (but only because they're saying what I want)" or "This person isn't trustworthy, don't listen to them (because they're saying things I don't want them to say)". There is no exception, and it's the bread and butter of collectivists and all those similar that place identity as sole importance above all else.
Any game or service that requires a number I refuse to use when possible. I don't care if I "miss out", I still respect myself enough to want my privacy.
I remember the days where you were told to NEVER give ANY identifying information about yourself online. The days where your online safety wasn't about mean words being said on some forum you voluntarily went to, but about ensuring your information wasn't being taken by some creep.
Now everyone posts every fucking detail of their life and it's honest to god saddening. It's not even about the "people are tracking me crap", even though that is true (what the fuck do you think marketing is other than tracking information?), it's about the sheer vanity of it all.
And what's worse is that people share this information about themselves in order to be treated differently, and it doesn't even matter if it's negative or positive treatment. Anonymity is the greatest equaliser there could possibly be, and every time you reveal even innocuous information about yourself, you're expecting that information to result in different treatment. A common example of this is people that start something like "As an [insert demographic here]", a simple yet effective line to try and get people to hold more value as to what you say than what you're actually saying holding the value.
Even me saying "I remember the days where....." is helping lend weight to my words because somehow me being there could mean my words are more important, but it doesn't actually make that much difference.
Every entity that wants more information from you is seeking to treat you differently. To exploit you in some manner, for good or for bad (eg "This person is so trustworthy, listen to them (but only because they're saying what I want)" or "This person isn't trustworthy, don't listen to them (because they're saying things I don't want them to say)". There is no exception, and it's the bread and butter of collectivists and all those similar that place identity as sole importance above all else.