Note how Tom cleverly decided to forgo the space between Tom and Chick in his nick, making it extremely unlikely that his forum posts will ever show up on a googling of “Tom Chick”.
I googled my real name and the entire first page is full of other people with my name, none of which seem crazy. One is an actor with an IMDB profile even.
I recently re-applied for a passport and it wanted me to list “other names,” I thought about putting down my various internet nics, but then thought better of it.
And so the benefits of a pseudonym on internet message boards become starkly obvious. Googling “Slainte Mhath” produces pages and pages of interesting reading, none of which is even remotely connected to me.
Googling my real name (which is not an uncommon one) results in all sorts of interesting aliases I could assume for myself. Star ex-Florida football player, TV host, anime voice actor, musician, attorney, author, scientist, the possibilites seem endless.
If only my actual life were half as interesting… =)
My QT3 stuff doesn’t show up on the first few pages of a Google of my real name. It’s mostly reviews of mediocre camcorders. :)
The downside of posting as your real-name is that you have censor yourself. If someone can Google your real-name and come up with a thread on your political or religious opinions, or a flame-war in which you resorted to some pretty petty tactics then it’s going to make job hunting at tech-savvy companies a little difficult. The question is whether most companies spend the time to bother searching past the first page of results or not, or even at all, even if they know how.
QT3 doesn’t show up when you google my name, just my website and a bunch of stuff about a hedge fund manager who is a distant relative.
Thank goodness I didn’t change my name to Mach Five, because then I’d be tied to the crap I posted here a few years ago. Jesus that shit was embarassing.
Something is wrong with this picture.
While it hasn’t ever come up for me (while I don’t use my name as a handle, it’s not terribly hard to get from my handle to my name), I’d like to think I wouldn’t be terribly interested in working for a place that would choose not to hire me after googling my name and finding forum posts. Much like I refused to take a job out of college (with an IT contracting company) because a customer they wanted to place me with wanted me to cut my hair. Looking back, it was a great call on my part (even if I cut the hair on my own within a year, once my daughter’s hand got skilled enough to grab and pull at the long hair).
Maybe I’ll find out, since my employer is cutting the group I work with and I need to find a new job. :)
I was wondering how that all worked out for you, Mach.
Sometimes you just need to get paid though. :(
Yeah man, people might like freak out.
“Dean? WTF man, your name is Steve! I…it’s like I don’t even know you, man.”
I came to my senses, thankfully. heh
Well, in a best case scenario, people posting under their real names will behave a bit more like the adults they’re supposed to be. Ideally, you won’t see them holding forth about their escapades in a hot tub and which women they should fuck, much less posting stuff about putting out cigarettes on women’s asses or calling them “cum dumpsters”. I’d like to think this forum would be absent that sort of stuff if people were using their real names, but that’s probably too much to expect.
-Tom
Not everyone has the luxury of arguing about politics, games, religion, what have you under their real name during business hours.
You do realize that you don’t need to be detailing grotesque sexual encounters in order to prefer anonymity right Tom? I mean, some people might not want their political or religious affiliations to prejudice the people who potentially might hire them. If I’m applying for a job at a company like Raytheon who depends on military contracts, maybe the person hiring has been giving a marching order not to hire any damn peaceniks? (Hypocrisy on my part aside here for a moment, please.)
That said, I think you’re right that it doesn’t prevent all juvenile behavior-- I mean just look at Gary “Chogglepants” Whitta.
Some do have the luxury of being able to go home and have the choice not to take our work with us, though. I like to be able to separate the two. Given the choice between the two scenarios I’d rather not have to be writing under deadlines about horrible games that make me want to gouge my eyes out at 2:45AM on a Saturday.
Well… that’s probably true as well.
Either that, or, else, the people with nothing to lose by associating their real names drive away with their crude behavior the people that do. Or something similar. I don’t know if it’s Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or just the Laws of Forum Entropy.