I’ve recently had a small scare when I got notified that what I do on here is considered “journalism”, which is why I’m obligated to have my full name and address out there. As such, I added a legal notice to my website, a proper imprint, and started presenting myself online by my full government name rather than the nom de plume of “Dan Dicere”.
To get used to this fact, I opened up a LinkedIn-Account where I promptly started connecting with people I’ve gotten to know over the years from various development studios, publishers and PR firms.
And then just this week, I’ve started attending Gamescom as a proper accredited “journalist”.
Today, I wanted to talk about the professionalisation I’ve undergone and just ramble about the concerns I have over turning this hobby and passion project into a more streamlined operation.
It felt weird, at first, presenting myself with a real name but I promptly realised that people don’t actually care all that much. If anything, presenting myself with my real name online gave more weight to what I do and say, which is actually quite nice.
I was always worried that taking this step and “doxing myself” would incur someone’s wrath or possibly invite trouble but so far nothing has happened and more than anything, it actually is nice that by doing it myself, I actually don’t need to worry about it happening to me at the hand of others.
Similarly, I’ve noticed that by introducing a review policy, a proper disclosure about transparency, and other such features to Indiecator, writing has become more difficult for me. I can’t just spout my usual political commentary as easily anymore because now my name is attached to it.
Offline, I’m very outspoken. I go to protests, participate in debates, and I frequently speak out about injustice. But something about doing it online, on here, has felt more dangerous all of a sudden. I don’t know how to describe it. Talking crap about AI bros, discussing politics on stream, and dealing with trolls has been pretty normal for me but the whole “this blog has my name on it” matter just kinda changed how I feel about things.
Beyond that, I’ve noticed that more and more reviews I’ve written recently feature that kind of “eloquent” tone that I use in university papers. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but at some point it just happened that I stopped writing the way I speak and instead picked up the habit of writing not necessarily more “eloquently” but rather just more “scholarly”.
I think that this is part of professionalisation as well but I don’t like this part a lot. Fearing reactionaries, writing more scholarly, and sterilizing a lot of my writing…
While I do take pride in what I’m doing, I fear that I’m losing my voice as a result. Indiecator is getting more and more removed from myself, and I may just have to revisit older blog posts of mine and try to figure out how much of that I want to return.
I used to make so many mistakes. For the longest time, I’d say “alas” as if it just meant “hence”. Errors like that born from my unfamiliarity with the English language can definitely stay away… but weird in-jokes and unique mannerisms that I have kinda just ended up getting purged along the way.
But maybe I’m just overthinking it and I’m not actually losing my voice. idk, how do you guys feel about that?
This post was originally published on Indiecator.
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