On the other hand, pseudonymity, unlike anonymity, has become the Internet’s cultural norm, and is ultimately inseparable from onymity to dedicated participators in online communities, and especially to people who have never known a world without computer mediated communication (CMC). To them, the pseudonym operates as a "real" identifier similar to one’s person in conventional face-to-face communication. This is in part due to the enormous amount of investment online community forum participants put into their online personae. Given the time active participants spend in these environments, from other users’ perspectives, the agent is that username, that pseudonym, that avatar. When, I ask, does a pseudonym become a name? And yet the comparative safety that pseudonymity provides still seems to exist, better-enabling people to participate in online communities. In relationships formed and maintained in virtual spaces, however, the pseudonym is often not a mask behind which an author can hide, but the actual "face" of the author’s electronic self. Where these communicative forms become particularly important is when online environments are considered public spheres3, where speaking (writing) is directed towards specific, active, and responsive audiences and has the potential to influence those audiences, thereby inciting real change within the electronic communities and beyond. I will surprise no one by stating that in public discourse, the responsibility or the writer (or speaker) is especially important. The key to "public" is that the agent is specific, clearly identifiable, and accessible. A "public speaker" implies a particular individual in front of a live audience. A "public environment" is one to which anyone4 has access (such as in "public restroom"). In public writing, the writers and the audiences they address are defined. For these reasons, we are not used to thinking about anonymity and pseudonymity as operating in a public sphere. Public is more direct, more "risky"; it is the potential direct confrontation that makes people fear public speaking and writing so substantially, where the agents are accessible to their audiences. Electronic environments, which participants experience as comparatively "private" (accessing in bedrooms or offices, for instance), but also as "public" (where realtime interaction with a definable, responsive audience occurs), offer us an opportunity to (re)examine the way anonymous and pseudonymous communication operates in this hybrid sphere. The "safety" of pseudonymity, that separation between the biological self and the electronic self, creates a disconnect between speakers and what they say, thus potentially lessening their sense of responsibility and accountability to each other, while maintaining the credibility of a named rhetor/author. I conclude my presentation by indicating that what such an analysis reveals is that it is the marker itself – not the "actual" agent – that public, online environment participators deem essential.