My handle here uses my real initials, and the barest amount of obfuscation of my real name. I figure this keeps people from casually looking at my personal info without actually deterring anybody who really wants it. I don’t keep much of a presence online, (ie. Facebook, Twitter, etc), so it isn’t really something I think about.
More generally, I have no choice but to be internet anonymous, seeing as I share my name with, among others, a legendary BBC newscaster, several US politicians, and, somehow, a TV character played by Aisha Tyler. Internet searching for my name yields nothing even vaguely related to me.
I don’t really post much that’s controversial or personally embarrassing, but The Powers That Be might wonder why I’m posting on a message board in the middle of the day…
This is the only place online where I use my real name, but seeing as there’s only one Kid Socrates on the internet, it’s not really that hard to narrow down who I am anyway.
When I signed up here, I had already made the conscious decision not to do the ‘dual personality’ thing that checkers alluded to in his post. The site links directly to websites where you can dig up my name, phone number, etc. But I didn’t want a potential client or associate Googling my first and last name and finding some forum thread where I’m cursing someone out for stupidity, much as they might deserve it. My standard handle for a lot of forums is RyanMM, for my middle and last name initials, but Tom suggested there could be some confusion with some other Ryans on the forum, so I went with my first and middle name spelled out. I don’t post anything that I could defend if called on it, but I do censor myself quite a bit to avoid sounding as venomous about certain topics as I can get.
It’s not like the internet’s a recent thing here. It’s followed some of us from teen years to adulthood.
Anonymity helps when you’re a professional with a fairly unique name, like a friend of mine who is now a college professor. Her students really don’t need to come across her Facebook pictures, so she uses a variant name.
When my brother left the place he’d been working at for ten years, they threw him a going away party and proceeded to get him super drunk. He doesn’t remember anything past 9PM, but there are pictures up on Facebook. Lots and lots and lots of pictures.
People don’t tend to think about how long their information will be around online. Things we did as stupid kids linger around like bad tattoos. We can hope time will put more information to cover it up some, but it’s still there.
My friends and I keep a blog where we post links and things and, occasionally, plans. I don’t particularly like that one of my exes could look up where I was.
You can cover your own ass okay, but you can’t cover people who link to you or mention your real name in their blogs. So you can use your real name and be super careful, or you can use something else and be a little more casual. And if you ever need to jump ship and run, you can cut off ties to a false identity much, much easier.
You know, when I saw Tom post that in one of those other random locked threads, I was taken aback. I guess Qt3 and other forums offer the opportunity to present a different face than you may otherwise show in your daily life – but for me at least, who I am on this board is exactly who I am in real life. There’s no disconnect here for me. The forum name is, I guess, just a way to keep prospective employers from saying ‘I see here you graduated summa cum laude and thought Dark Void was really keen.’ It just keeps life simpler, I guess.
Oh, the other thing I didn’t mention: the trivial obfuscation of my name gives a sort of plausible deniability if I ever did end up having a disagreement with, say, an employer about something I said online.
I’ve actually debated changing my name for a while, and even jokingly said that I’d change it once Tom interviewed me. But to be honest? Not exactly proud of some of the slap fights I’ve gotten into while here at Qt3, and I really wouldn’t want my name attributed to specifically one or two posts I made that were completely unnecessary and backhanded comments (One of which I wrote ignorant of the fact that it could come across as being so nasty, but upon retrospection, it was pretty rude and fucked up). I eventually may want to have a good job that may put me in the public eye, and I don’t want to get shit about something I posted on an internet message board.
But at the same time, I don’t really think I should be ashamed of things I’ve said. I could always go back and delete all my unloved posts, but I feel like that would be cheapening the experience.
It isn’t really, though. On a messageboard, you get to choose what you show to others. In real life, there’s piles of verbal and non-verbal signifiers that create the composite picture of how you appear to others. Your online persona, regardless of whether or not you use your real name, is by definition an edited version of yourself.
And as far as “madkevin” goes, it’s trivially easy for anybody with a modicum of computer savvy to find my real name using that, especially as I’ve filled out my location field here on Qt3. So why keep using it instead of my real name? Habit, mostly (I’ve used it since Usenet), and it’s a little test for potential employers to see how smart they are (or, at least how smart they are at using Google).
You inevitably show a different facet of yourself here, simply by nature of the medium. Even the forum’s “Tom Chick”, “Matt Bowyer”, etc., aren’t exactly who they are in real life. Conversely, those of us who use aliases are probably showing, roughly who we are in real life too.
Sure, some people intentionally put on a persona, but I’ve found that most of the time their online persona realy is a facet of who they are.
In regards to what madkevin and Anaxagoras are saying, it’s true that this method of communication is much narrower – no visual cues to tell more easily when someone is joking or being aggressive – but it’s just as likely you present an edited version of yourself in real life as well. We act more formally when meeting, I don’t know, the President than when we go bowling with the guys. By that token, sure I present a different attitude on Qt3 than when talking with my mother, for example. But I wouldn’t say that who I am on this forum isn’t who I am in real life.
I just use a first-initial-last-name thing because while I can remember different passwords, I just cannot remember different logins for some reason. I am trivially google-able.
Also, on the online presence vs offline presence thing, who I am online is actually a reasonably faithful personality sketch enacted by an offshored team in Bangalore. They / we work for quite reasonable rates and free me / our employer up for more lucrative pursuits.
I don’t post anything I wouldn’t say in person, so I’m not worried about using my real name.
The only real problem is that I’ve noticed some of my comments come across as snarky lately, since I don’t have as much time to post as I used to. They’re not snarky, they’re usually just goofs on softballs the previous poster has left in their message that I can’t miss the chance to swing at. But in person, you’d hear my tone of voice and the underlying snicker to know that I’m just having fun… But online, that can come across as “snarky asshole,” and that’s not me.
For the living examples of JGGIDT, I can see why they’d want to use a pseudonym.
There’s an another online forum I’ve long followed. I’ve met tens of people who post on it and almost always they’re just like the picture their posts present. It’s rather hard to hide or misrepresent your “true” self over a large body of writing. Writing is language is thinking is a great part of our mental makeup. By writing you inevitably reveal yourself.
I changed my user name not to hide who I am from QT3, but to reduce the search rankings of my QT3 posts so that other activities related to my name get higher search engine rankings. Perhaps I should have chosen Woger Rong instead of Lunch of Kong. I just wanted something that rhymed and had the same rhythm as my name.
Regardless, please refer to me in the manner most comfortable to you.
As some others have mentioned, my preferred handle has been a constant as long as I’ve been on the internet. It’s as much “me” as my real name. Also, (and I know this sounds like crazy talk) I tend to behave and act online much as I do in meat space. That is, I’m a bit of an ass and I like to clown around but other than that I’m a pretty normal, ok guy.
What I don’t expect is that any of you (real name users or otherwise) are playing by the same rules. So while I can assure you that, in as much as you’d want to, you’re getting the real me; I’m going to take what Internet Anonymity gives and play it safe. And by “you” I’m mostly concerned with anyone out there doing searches hoping to learn what they shouldn’t about “me” and not necessarily Qt3.
