Recently my name and integrity was questioned because of a satire video I posted on this blog (now removed). It was a tutorial on ServiceNow, but narrated by an american rapper where he used his own slang and curse words, but content wise it was pretty much correct. Comedy is subjective, and it is obvious that we can’t all like all forms of humor, but there is a very normal technique (also knows as “comedic device”) to take something far away from the standard and place it in a situation where the audience would never expect it. It utilizes the “taboo” comedic device to say something nobody would say (or in a way they would never say it - like a rapper would) in the civilized element (ServiceNow).
This was that kind of humor.
Background:
The video starts out with the image of a gun background, to emphasize the “gangster” style of narrating the tutorial. The goal was to take something as corporate and suited-up like ServiceNow and place it in something completely different setting. The narrator then went on explaining about the ServiceNow user interface, video screen recording an actual instance, but using verbal terms like “this Module s***”, “your b****-a** Role”, and “Incidents are f***** up s***”.
Funny? To some. Childish? Absolutely. Provoking? Apparently so.
No company, client, or real person was in any way mentioned in the video. My own dev instance was being used.
Then I was suddenly approached asking me to remove the video and this blog as well (remove SN references from it). I was a bit stunned because it was claimed that I had “violent and child abusive references”, something I had in no way intended to portray. You could probably say that a picture of a gun, although not being one in use, is a reference to violence - but if you want to debate it you could also argue that it is a reference to an olympic sport. I know, I know - with the complete setting it is obvious that it wasn’t, but I do believe it is far fetched to conclude it is glamorizing violence - unless you missed the comedic device.
The mention of child abuse puzzled me for a while until I realized it was not about the video at all - it was about this blog, or to be more exact - the name of it: Chopped Kid Persona. [edit: now changed to avoid misunderstandings - but still, read on to understand the background of it]
When you sign up for a tumblr account, and you choose a name already used by someone, tumblr will try to generate one for you. In my case it auto generated “choppedkidpersona” as username and blog name. I don’t understand the algorithm behind the name generation tumblr uses, but it seems to pick a few words and randomly put them together:
The “AlwaysBabyCollector” user name I see easily could be offensive to some people. (From urban dictionary: “Baby Collector : A term used to describe a woman (or girl) who mothers children for the sole purpose of collecting a larger piece of welfare-system pie.”)
When Tumblr suggested the name choppedkidpersona, my thought was - well, I have a kid persona. I joke alot. Wikipedia descripes a persona as:
A persona (plural personae or personas), in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor.
In my mind, the blog was supposed to give me an outlet to describe my learnings in ServiceNow, my frustrations on the path, and to shout out my success on the way. At the same time, my kid persona allows me to write in a playful manner, to me it is a much easier way to describe things. People who know me well understands this. The “chopped” part of the name I thought fitted well with the synonym “hacked”. My foundation lies in programming, I have been a system developer for many many years - in the original sense of the word I have aspired to be a hacker:
In computing, a hacker is any highly skilled computer expert. (- Wikipedia)
This is not in any way to be confused with the term name controversy.
Using pseudonyms is quite common these days; People ranging from musicians (deadmau5) to actors (Demi Moore) and even famous politicians (Jeb Bush) are not using their real names.
At the same time, I felt that since I was going to use a pseudonym on the blog (although my real name IS mentioned), it creates the impression of a fictional persona, but which represents a real person - this can be philosophized about being similar to having a split personality. To play with this idea, my persona is split - or chopped.
To conclude, the name Chopped Kid Persona is meant to be understood as it is the kid persona which is chopped, or split. Not the kid. And I am the kid.
What have I learned from this? Well, I have certainly learned I can’t make any joke references in work related matters, even if it’s done in my spare time and not targeting anyone. I still hope I won’t need to delete the blog, if that’s what it takes to not offend anyone, because it would take a bit of work to move all the material to a new one. I am not sure if changing name on the blog is even possible. [edit: it’s possible. To avoid further misunderstandings, I’ll try to change the name to kidpersona.]
If you in any way feel I am writing anything which offends you, please just contact me directly. I’ll sort it out as it is not my intention to make anyone feel bad.
Love you!
- Anders Real Persona
