My Conversation with Default Friend, Katherine Dee

Alt identity, digital gnosticism, and Latter-Day Ain't

Katherine Dee writes Default Wisdom, a popular internet culture blog and loose advice column of sorts. She kindly agreed to answer a few questions.

So Katherine first-off, thank you so much for accepting the invitation to interview in this weird space we call “the internet”. You and I have never met in person, we’re communicating via email and Google Doc, and I write under the name Infovores while many of your blog readers, they technically know your real name, but I suspect think of you primarily as Default Friend. How do you think about the decision to write under an alt identity and what possibilities does that open up for you that might not exist if you were, let’s say, fully Katherine all the time?

Katherine itself is a pseudonym, since a lot of publications were hesitant about publishing “Default Friend.” 

The crazy thing is that many people, including many whom I wish didn’t, know the name I go by in real life; they know my pseudonym; and they know my username. I’ve gone by many other names in the past, too. When I first got on Twitter, I was an anime av and my username was a random Russian word and people knew me as that for the longest time. People like Oliver Traldi (whose writing, as an aside, I recommend without reservation) might remember what that name is. 

I often wish that I could go back to those days—simpler times and I was able to move more freely between subcultures. 

I’ve done an awful job at keeping the stream separate, and right now, it just comes down to an organizational principle. If you google “Katherine Dee,” you mostly get the articles I've published under that name. It’s easy and it’s in one place. If I need to send someone clips, or someone wants a quick idea of the kind of work I do, it’s all there. 

I was doxed accidentally and not maliciously last January, and it was the beginning of the end for there being multiple discrete digital identities for me. A lot of my coworkers are familiar with Default Friend/Katherine Dee. My family knows about each name I’ve used. 

People recognize me as DF in public periodically—recently I was at a party and a young woman asked me if I was that person who wrote about Tumblr. I briefly hosted a podcast where my co-host was much more forthcoming with her personal life and real world identity than I had been previously, and she called me by the name I go by in real life. At this point, I’ve accepted that it’s just a labeling system, and I’m okay with that. 

People have often asked me (and have also speculated about) why I use pseudonyms at all if my writing is mostly uncontroversial. Due to many of my own mistakes, and external pressure to have my digital avatar more connected to my physical person, there will always be limits to what I can say, and I hate that. As it stands, there are definitely certain things that I’ve done—people whom I’ve interviewed, places that I’ve published, that have prevented me from taking jobs at certain companies or even being friends with certain people, if you can believe it. I often think, if it’s this bad for me, then I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who’ve gone further. And this cuts across many different directions, too. I’m in this odd space of neither being extreme enough nor inoffensive enough; people don’t know what to make of me. 

I’m not right wing enough for many right wingers, I’m not a leftist and never will be, “centrist” has weird baggage but also doesn’t feel entirely true, either, even though I’ve used it because it feels safe. I have even identified as a “shitlib” or a neolib, just to get people off my back, as if to say, “Yeah, my beliefs are mainstream and garbage, move it along.” Is that true? I don’t know.

I hate that it’s this way. I don’t know enough about any one ideology to subscribe to a label, I don’t know enough history, it’s all a mess. 

Anyway, this has been a long tangent: if I could do it all over again, I would have never shown my face or gone on video, and kept the Russian handle and anime avatar. That creates a separate set of limitations, but I think it would have allowed me more bandwidth to say what I really think, even when it’s offensive or difficult or I’m still figuring it out. 

I think a lot of people when they talk about the impact of the internet, they focus on the content it makes available whereas you focus on the medium itself and the experiential element. For example, you emphasize a tension between digital life and the embodied experience when you write:

"I’m a firm believer that a fundamental dissatisfaction with the body is an essential piece of any digital-first community."

This is just so interesting to me in part because elements of this go back at least to early gnosticism where the mortal body was inherently inferior and only the spirit or soul could be saved. I’m not sure what my question is here exactly but can you speak to how your view here is deeply true to an aspect of the human experience or at least compelling in a way that perhaps older generations or the less highly online might have a hard time fully relating to or appreciating?

The internet invites you to forget who you are (perhaps it’s because, as McLuhan said of other media, it’s an extension of the self), and when you’re pulled back into meatspace, you remember, and more often than we’d like to admit, this causes discomfort. 

So one thing I’ve noticed that successful internet communities do is they both give you the space to role play this idealized self and the tools to change your body. You see it everywhere: pro-anorexia or bodybuilding communities being among the most extreme, but also wellness, skincare, any niche diet. 

They all are mechanically the same in how they manifest, the only thing that changes in the content. They become hobbies, or fandoms, if you like: there’s an emphasis on the way things should be in an ideal world. Your time in real life becomes about trying to match the role play with reality. It’s not surprising then that people who grew up with this tension–this tension that we don’t quite have the words for yet–are big believers in manifestation, the Law of Assumption, reality shifting. 

Before we conclude this conversation, I have to bring up Mormonism. We connected initially over your kind-of side blog, where you write about Mormon life and culture from a non-LDS perspective but as someone who clearly appreciates and I would say inhabits that peculiar outlook in certain ways. How does your affinity for people and things LDS connect to your work more broadly and to what extent have your experiences with Mormonism continued to inform your thinking and beliefs?

This is a good question, and unfortunately, I’m not sure how to answer it. 

My interest in LDS feels separate, in so many ways, but now that I think about it, maybe it’s not really all that separate at all. It’s the opposite side of the coin. 

The Church has come in and out of my life several times, and it always feels as though it’s a proxy for something better. The way things should be, as opposed to the way things are. To me, it represents a sort of hopefulness. I recognize that attachment to the very religious in other people, too, which is why I can identify with it. 

It might not surprise you to learn that I once came very close to being baptized, but I chose to remain in the lifelong investigator category. Everything was lining up, too, I was living on Alma St, having weird dreams… but it just didn’t shake out.

But to end on a happier note, here’s a story you might like: 

In a small and very indirect way, LDS created the Default Friend persona. I’m loath to call it a ‘persona,’ but I don’t know, maybe a better way to put it is that it started that chapter of my life.

I’ve always been an Internet junkie, but before the late 2010s, I was less tuned in to the startup scene. 

Anyway, a few years ago, on April 27th– we’re coming up on it!--I was in San Francisco, and for whatever reason, I started a conversation with a total stranger. 

That stranger was an ex-Mormon who, I suspect, hadn’t totally emotionally left the Church. Big youth pastor energy, loved talking about their past life as a Mormon, really passionate about Bay Area tech. I could just feel the California optimism pulsing through them. I’d never met someone like that. 

I remember thinking, wow, you think you’re going to leave a dent in the universe, don’t you. (And of course, not believing that they would, but being moved by their confidence.) 

That kind of faith is contagious. See what I mean about my suspicion they hadn’t fully left? I even remember the date because it felt like a conversion of some kind, like, wow, this person really believes in California, and in tech, and themselves, and maybe I should believe in myself, too.

I was really changed by it. 

Have you ever read The Five People You Meet In Heaven? It’s weird how these inconsequential things can end up being so significant. 

Because nothing really happened that day, it was all internal. If you found that person and asked them about it, I’m sure they’d have no memory of what they said or what they did that could have been so impactful. They might even think I’m crazy for describing it like this.

And yet, it marked a shift for me and I was never the same. They just were a very peculiar person and us meeting was a peculiar moment that called me out of a sort of self-made darkness. 

The end of the story is that we were briefly friends, and it was as eccentric of a friendship as you might imagine. Every time we hung out, it was some great and weird adventure.

From it, the early seeds of ‘Default Friend’ were planted. To this day, they remain the only person I’ve ever spent a significant amount of time with who appreciated LDS media as much as I do. 

Now, here we are.

@default_friend