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Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

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Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#121

Post by mason240 »

bsamuels wrote: post #41
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a n=1 for you: I just forcefully argued against male circumcision on Reddit. Check it out if you like.

The problem is that circumcision isn't a heated controversy, it's not like someone is going to dox you because you made an argument against it. Here's a few arguments off the top of my head that someone might dox you for: -Whether or not feminism is the cause of the recent emasculation of men -Whether or not Israel is committing crimes against humanity in Gaza and against the Palestinians -Whether or not transexual p…

>The problem is that circumcision isn't a heated controversy

On Reddit(I don't know about anywhere else because I've never seen it discussed anywhere else), there seems to be alot of assumptions made about people who argue against it, specifically that they are MRA extremists who are misogynistic.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#122

Post by mason240 »

twobits wrote: post #118
anaphor wrote: post #17

I use my real name, and I quite frankly do not care if I get passed up for a job or something like that because of something I said online. I'm pretty sure any employer I would actually want to work for wouldn't care about me ranting about the NSA or something (might even get me a job, who knows). That being said, I do not say anything online that I wouldn't in real life (except perhaps on IRC channels where I use a…

"quite frankly do not care if I get passed up for a job or something like that because of something I said online" That's because you can still find other jobs. That may not be true for ever.

We lucky that we currently live in a time where there are less programmers then there are job for them, but that situation could be reversed in a decade from now.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#123

Post by mason240 »

DanBC wrote: post #8
Casseres wrote: post #4

There is no undo button when using your real name on the Internet. With a nickname, you always have the option of associating it with your real identity at a later date if you so choose.

Most people do a lousy job of keeping the names separate. You can usually follow a chain of pseudonyms back through time to get to the early embarrassing posts. Meatball wiki changed my mind about real name posting. First I thought "always use an obvious nym", then "always use a realistic, but false, name". Now I just post using me real name on a few places, and a bunch of nyms (realistic and otherwise) in other plac…

>My writing (especially my appalling use of punctuation) is distinctive. I think it'd be easy enough to tell if a post is mine or not by counting the weird commas.

It's very much an NP problem.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#124

Post by ams6110 »

pilif wrote: post #91
mrspeaker wrote: post #2

When I got on the intertubes, oh-so-many years ago - the rules were simple: the ONLY piece of information you could freely give on public forums, or IRC, was your nick. Now, the only piece of information you are supposed to withhold is your credit card number. I'll say this about the new ways: I'm extremely glad that I didn't have my teenage years documented and archived. Dodged that bullet!

When I joined the internet, there was Usenet. And Usenet etiquette (at least for de.* which is what I had to restrain myself to due to the general lack of English) required you to provide a real name, so that's what I've done. This made me much less reluctant to use my real name later on. However, just as my real name, my pseudonym also stuck and I try to get it whenever I sign up for a service. That way I'm twitter.…

Definitely my recollection as well, most people on usenet (ca. late 1980 -- early 1990s) used real names.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#125

Post by aaronbrethorst »

lelandbatey wrote: post #90
danso wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you must be very young, i.e. 10-12, or have very perceptive teachers. I feel that teachers and other authority figures still don't get it , especially those above 40 who aren't in a Internet/computer-heavy field. And even young folks in the tech field still don't realize it (basically everyone who uses something like SnapChat too enthusiastically)

I'd put it down to where I grew up and who I grew up around. This was 2000-2002, and I grew up in Redmond, Washington. My first real Internet experience was getting a school email account, and they gave us a long series of talks about how we were supposed to use them appropriately.

Are you at UW now?

edit: ah, WSU I see.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#126

Post by spc476 »

lelandbatey wrote: post #55
mrspeaker wrote: post #2

When I got on the intertubes, oh-so-many years ago - the rules were simple: the ONLY piece of information you could freely give on public forums, or IRC, was your nick. Now, the only piece of information you are supposed to withhold is your credit card number. I'll say this about the new ways: I'm extremely glad that I didn't have my teenage years documented and archived. Dodged that bullet!

I felt the same way about nicknames, but at some point I realized that I had a digital trail attached to my online-name that was a mile wide. I figured I might as well just start using my real name (which is rather unique already). Also, I find your story of rules interesting. When I was first introduced to the internet (when I was about 7 years old, in school), the one "rule" I remember being told to us over and ove…

I've been on the Internet since 1989 (second year of college) when practically everything on the Internet was public (even every computer---NAT wasn't done until the mid-90s) and that if you didn't want it known publically, you didn't put it on the Internet. And what you did put on the Internet you must accept responsibility for.

Even today, I treat everything I post to the Internet as public. Even on MyGoogleFaceSpacePlusBook, I don't bother with privacy settings, because of 1) the above, where I treat everything I put on the Internet as public, and 2) the people who run MyGoogleFaceSpacePlusBook really love mucking with the default privacy setttings.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#127

Post by tomphoolery »

mrspeaker wrote: post #2

When I got on the intertubes, oh-so-many years ago - the rules were simple: the ONLY piece of information you could freely give on public forums, or IRC, was your nick. Now, the only piece of information you are supposed to withhold is your credit card number. I'll say this about the new ways: I'm extremely glad that I didn't have my teenage years documented and archived. Dodged that bullet!

I think part of the flight from Facebook and Google+ into smaller social networks which don't require such identifying details is due to this desire for pseudo-anonymity. That said, it's no IRC. And many forums I frequented years ago have long since been destroyed. Perhaps that's why teens are also digging Snapchat, and services like it. A way to communicate without being tracked.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#128

Post by acheron »

I mostly don't, though I ended up using my real name on Twitter, which I post to regularly. Generally I try to avoid it whenever possible -- I hate being Googlable. Not really sure why I changed my mind for Twitter.

I have an unusual name combination, so there aren't many others with my name. However, about 5 years ago, one of the few others started playing college football, so the search results are mostly for him, though I'm guessing he's graduated by now.

Just now googled my name for the first time in a couple years probably. Still mostly about college football, with a few of my things scattered throughout, including my Twitter account and an archive of a mailing list where I used my real email address (which is my real name). Also at least a couple things still surfacing from the mid-90s, when I didn't know any better.

My first Internet lesson to my kids will be: never use your real name online. I am glad most of my teenage real-name-using happened on local BBSs or things like AOL, and so it has vanished into the ether; my kids won't be as lucky.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#129

Post by prodigal_erik »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #72
stfu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! OP comment sounds a lot like the "I use my real name, because I have nothing to hide" argument. As long as your viewpoints are completely aligned with the mainstream opinions held in your extended peer group, you have nothing to loose using your real name. But in all other cases you never know when some HR minion thinks he became a data mining genius because he dug up some comment you made 10 years ago on…

> "I use my real name, because I have nothing to hide" Of course I do, everyone does. I'm just very thoughtful about never posting it online ;) Also, pet peeve: it's "lose", not "loose".

Really, a smiley face? Dissent is how civilization fixes bad ideas, and suppression of it is not to be taken lightly.

Re: Is it bad practice to use your real name online?

#130

Post by macNchz »

I have an uncommon name—as far as I can tell there's only one other person using the internet who shares my name right now. That raises the stakes quite a bit...even using full real names, the majority of people have a small extra layer of obscurity: there are a bunch of other people around the world with the same name.

I liken using my real name online to having all of my in-person conversations be recorded and broadcast on TV. If I go to a bar down the street and meet some strangers from my neighborhood, I'm fairly anonymous, and our conversation is decently private. I can express unpopular opinions and have no record of it. I'm not on the record, and I don't have to wonder what everyone I know and everyone I will ever know might think if they Googled me and found that conversation. If I go on a neighborhood blog and have the same conversation in the comments with my real name, I have the ear of, potentially, the entire world.

So I use my real name some places, and pseudonyms in others. Just how I might talk to coworkers, new friends, people at a party or business contacts without them instantly knowing everything I've ever said or done, having a pseudonym makes it possible to isolate your personal spaces online to some degree. It's usually possible to gauge the scope of how many people are privy to a real life conversation, so I try to achieve a similar setup online. I don't pretend that any of my user accounts online are at all truly anonymous, but they present a small barrier between online spaces. Much like meeting strangers in real life: they can probably find out who you are, but you are in control of how much information they have about you at any given momemt.

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