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I’m Kafkaesquí, And So Are You

Surfing the Net sometimes takes on the air of a pantsing. Whether to myself or to some other poor duffer it’s hard to tell at times, but there’s often a distinct air of that spur of the moment prankish event, like some broadband trickster god is on the prowl for any chance to pounce in with a bad-natured scrape of asininity. This feeling comes upon me from a variety of circumstances, but it digs itself deep when the occurrence of what I can only call mock identity theft raises it’s stumpy little head.

Through a brash newsgroup post, vauntering e-mail, or meretricious Web page, someone somewhere makes it perfectly clear they are the only rightful owners of a self-devised name, the (once ASCII, then ANSI, now Unicode) appellation representing one of their online personas. They come to a wrongheaded conclusion that those twenty-eight seconds spent inventing a linguistically strained user handle or gaming moniker reserves them the opportunity to demand patent and trademark rights over it. This pretense, this delusional conceit over ones connected sobriquet is hardly any relation to the true rakish criminal gesture of impersonation and use of your personal data for the intent of comping cell phone service and a meal at the Olive Garden. The only real crime here is fictive, and self-inflicted.

Strange how this attitude occurs in an environment where ownership is nine-tenths of the joke. We freely take whatever isn’t nailed down, code and application and composition, then reuse and distribute with no concern to its fabricator, sometimes enjoying full credit for our plagiarist ways. In return we demand a community reaming for anyone feckless enough to come along and perform a simple misdeed of nicking ones nick. No matter that they may have arrived at it through their own ingenuity, just as we make claim to. And hair-splitting reaches frizzled heights with a resemblance to ones chosen praenomen. If you were brilliant enough to come up with Zhazzbot, having Schazzbot cross into your borders can be seen as a call to arms. A shame so many fail to realize there’s only so much originality to go around.

I’ll hazard a guess that this is due at least in part to a protectionist nature which hugs tight to our anthropoidal makeup. We’re quite custodial when it comes to anything we’ve given birth to, however brief and painless the gestation period was. The duty you see is to safeguard the children — but only if their ours. Of course, vanity resides in all personal affectations. Not just in how we groom or dress, but in all the manners by which we present ourselves. I’m sure you’ve seen (or perhaps had) the reaction of a woman at a party when she first sees another wearing the exact same outfit. There’s a bit of surprise and embarrassment, but mainly it’s a response of ownership. “How dare she wear my dress!” This is not a female thing; it’s a human one.

So to the Kafkaesque’s, Kafka411’s, Kafkanaut’s, and other Franz K. derivatives who may be reading this anti-panegyric, I have the following to say: there’s no baggy-pantsing going on here, and no pantsing as well. The sensation of accidental nudity when your trousers drop about your ankles and leave the untanned bits to be cuffed gently by the breeze is not real. The only de-trousering being done is to your ego.