Poll: Do you use your real identity on HN?

Yes. No reason not to. Even for things like game forums I use my real name more and more these days.

I do post in a few anonymous, testosterone-fueled forums where people speak very intemperately. If anybody found my posts there and connected them to me, I'd want the signal of anonymity, so that I'm not responsible for every last nuance as being representative of how I'd like my views presented.

But otherwise, I have little need for anonymity.

Heck, you could figure out a reasonable amount about my proclivities just from observing which particular porn actresses interact with me on Twitter. :)

Not too this level, but i use a pseudonym here. I don't generally post inflammatory stuff but I do like a good debate. But I use my real name on twitter and am very careful about what I post. I use my real name on Facebook, but I am not so worried about what I post, it's to a closed audience so i can vent and be negative without being looked down on.

In this day and age of Google, you're just a click away and a whole bunch about you has been discovered about you even before an interview. I'm not a big flying hot shot, just a developer. Who know what will happen in years to come and it's difficult to wipe that public footprint.

might be useful to make a distinction between "online handle" and "real"

I use the same username on all websites, so you can pretty much track my entire internet existence through it. In that sense it's "real", possibly more so than my legal name, which I hardly use because it's difficult to pronounce in English.

My real name is about one step of indirection away from my username, and I don't go out of my way to hide that. Most people never bother to take that step. I have a lot of opinions (that sometimes change) which may be unpopular with certain people; I don't care about those people. Most people don't care about me, nor do they read about my opinions anyway, and my blog is primarily for my future self rather than a real audience. I'm nobody, much like almost everyone else. Furthermore, there are lots of people with really crazy or eccentric or radical or just plain stupid opinions that nevertheless maintain an audience or at least live happy lives. Maybe not in Egypt, of course.

In terms of employment prospects, many employers won't care what you do in your free time so long as you show up and do your work. Or if you're starting your own company, many customers won't care if the CEO holds some opinion or another. Even the large public outcries against people like the CEO of Papa John's haven't killed them as a business.

I don't find anonymity to factor into my rudeness, unlike others. My rudeness is generally matched with the rudeness of the person I'm talking to over anything else, like my mood, feelings for the other person, or anonymity. It sometimes becomes a game, too, to see if I can be cleverly rude in response to a brutishly rude comment.

Yes, HN is one of the sites where i use my real name. In some other place on the other hand I like to be more "crude" and so, there, I use a fake identity.