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> wouldn’t this accomplish the opposite effect? Yes. It's an affectation. To suggest that it's "to shift the attention from her identity to her ideas" is eithe
by jfk13 8y ago
> wouldn’t this accomplish the opposite effect?
Yes. It's an affectation. To suggest that it's "to shift the attention from her identity to her ideas" is either incredibly naïve or simply dishonest. Deliberately breaking the established conventions of English writing in such a visible way is sure to draw attention to the name/identity, not shift it away.
- toomanyrichies 8y agoI’m confused by the downvotes here. I tend to agree with the above point, and while I’m open to having my mind changed, I have yet to see a convincing rebuttal to it. At the very least, it stands to reason that discussions and threads like this one would not exist if she capitalized her pen name. So the most charitable statement I can think of is that she genuinely did believe her actions would deflect attention from herself, but that they actually had the opposite effect. A more cynical statement is that she felt that a) her ideas wouldn’t attract enough attention on their own, and b) she needed a gimmick of some sort in order to stand out from the crowd. Few things annoy me more than people who try to stand out for the sake of attention, so I’m choosing to believe the more charitable scenario.