I was talking to a friend yesterday about my posting on 2+2 and other previous forums, and he responded with something akin to "What really amazes me is that you post this all using your real name!"

I've never been much of a private person, so I just never really saw a reason to hide my identity. I'm no keyboard commando spouting off hate filed bile while hiding thousands of miles away and hoping no one can ever find me. I'm just posting, having fun, and making the occasional joke while I "hang out" with my "electronic friends" on a message board.

In short, I have a hard time figuring out why people WOULD hide. I've had three bad run in's in my life with people who have "figured out" who I am via my posts or conversations in various places, two of the situations resulted in harassing phone calls which were pretty damn boring, and the first one resulted in some vandalism to my car, and that one I'm reasonably certain had NOTHING to do with my internet presence and was some locals I had a problem with using my net presence as a cover up for their desire to be jerks.

Obviously some people hide their name because they have some level of fame, and don't want to be known (and some do the opposite and yell it loud and clear), but for all you Joe Schmo's out there posting, I'm curious as to your reasoning behind choosing to be anonymous on places like this.

Ray

I think using your real name online for anything even moderately controversial is a bad idea. You never know what kind of future job or affiliation you might have.

I have a feeling people are going to SERIOUSLY regret making some posts later in life.

I personally tend to use a few anonymous accounts/usernames if it's a gray area.

There is no advantage I see in using my real name to post, considering I am a relatively private person. There is only downside.

Well, it's virtually impossible to remain truly anonymous. Even so, I don't personally see my use of the moniker 'sober' as some disguise - I generally act like myself, sometimes, being a dick, usually trying to show everyone how smart/funny I am, etc. I've used it for years now, and have actually had people call me by that name irl.

I'm more concerned about true anonymity at the poker table, because that translates into a dollar sign. That's why my table names have always been basically a nondescript mash of letters/numbers.

imo

z28: So you are afraid of the employer google factor? I can see that one. Makes sense. A simple answer of course is to not be controversial though.

Abreu: This is where I think I'm an old fogey. I don't TRUST usernames. I don't TRUST people hiding behind a screen name while they post. It lets them abuse their power of speech with no repercussions. Its a pet peeve I have at all times with message boards. I think there'd be a lot less noise to signal ratio on boards if people had to use their real names, and even less trolling.

Ray

I always thought your name was a rather twisted play on words.
Rape Ours/Rape Hours. I'm glad it's not.

How could the simple answer be to censor every single post you make rather than to just use an alias?

Well, sometimes I like to argue controversial points just to play Devil's Advocate. I plan on finding a way to work for myself soon enough, so the employer factor isn't -that- big of a deal.

Ray - have you seen many of the new online reputation management companies that use SEO and other tactics to help people get rid of embarrassing posts?

Short answer:

1) You're not supposed to trust usernames.
2) The repercussions of "abusing the power of speech" is losing the power of speech (ie. banning). Proportional response. You wouldn't have had the 3 run-ins in real life if you had been posting anonymously, and you aren't abusive at all with your posting.
3) There would be less noise, but also fewer contributions altogether. This board, for example, would be much much smaller (and consequently less profitable) if people were forced to use their real names.

I agree I'm not supposed to trust user names, but in my mind, user names destroy a huge potential for rapport and building actual friendships and companions because there is no trust.

I've been here since 2005, I have less than 3k posts. I'm no post monger, but am a "regular" poster.

I laugh at these survivor's because I normally don't know these people because when someone posts form a user name, I automatically discount it, not from a content perspective but from the perspective of "this is a name I should store in my memory banks because this may be someone I could see myself hanging out with or being sociable with at some level."

The few people I have rapport with, or whose names I would recognize as being a particular personality on 2+2:

Howard Beale - have met in real life
tuq - have met in real life
Alobar - Have met in real life
ESnow - Have met in real life
El Diablo - because everyone knows El Diablo
Dominic - I remember mostly because of the industry he used to work in

and.. then it runs thin. I *kind of* am familiar with FFK, Octopi, and R34 just because girl power posters are often rare, and then mrkilla and 4_2_it merely for their overarching presence, and hitch because I know him from Keller's website forums.

So, if I don't know you in real life, and you're not a chick or a mod, despite us perhaps talking for 3 years now, I still don't know you.

That seems like a bad thing to me, and I very much attribute it to the anonymous factor.

I'm a really honest, open person with my friends irl. I feel like I'm the same way on here. I wouldn't, however, want an employer, family member, etc. to read some of my more embarrassing revelations or neurotic thoughts on people's behavior in public places. I think this is not a difficult concept to understand.

As a female, I had it pushed into me that I should be anonymous because oh noes I might get stalked/raped/etc.

But as I got older (and got less attractive to pedophiles), it wasn't as big of a concern. Also, it became tremendously easy to figure out who I was if I let ANY information about me out. And, as I pursued acting, more information about me was on the internet due to various plays and stuff. For the most part, I have good control of what is out there on the net about me, and am aware of it, so it becomes a nonissue.

Plus, being not as anonymous has allowed me to meet a lot of very cool people via the internet. I'd rather risk a few crackpots (who aren't restricted to the internet anyway) for the upside of making a lot of cool new friends.

This is the easiest to understand for me. I understand that people are not as open to me and less concerned about privacy. I was one of those people who, when they first came out, had a web cam on my house 24/7. I simply never cared too much about privacy and still don't. I think those people that abuse other's private lives tell much more about themselves than they do about me.

But again, I also completely agree that I am likely in the vast minority when it comes to this, so the thread was to see, overall, why people prefer anonymity over openness.

Ray

I totally see the girl perspective, especially if heaven forbid you are cute at all. Then the risk is high and Chris Hanson can not protect everyone.

Your last paragraph definitely sets a tone that I feel as well. Back in my days on IRC, I met a ton of people in real life, and the friendships I made in those days last to this day, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. If hitch or killa were local to me, I'd be setting up a happy hour every week. :P

Ray

I think it has more to do with the sheer size of this board. I was on a smaller board before this and, even though everyone used screen names, everyone "knew" each other. I knew who would respond to particular topics, who like which NFL teams, who felt certain ways about political issues.

On 2p2, it's just too big to know everyone. Even if everyone here used real names, you'd be confused as to which poster was who (e.g., "was that John Smith that's the O/8 player, or Jim Smithens?")

The good thing about usernames is that they are typically more unique than real names.

This.

Why would you use your real name? There is absolutely ZERO benefit! While I agree depending on the person it can be highly unlikely that anything bad will come from it, anything GOOD will NEVER come out of it!

The main reason why I do not want to reveal my identity is that I do not personally respect a huge load social rules and in real life most people will consider me a massive weirdo because of that. I absolutely hate faking and thus since I can be anonymous on the internet I will eagerly use this possibility to be myself (sounds gay, but it's true). I particularly wouldn't want my family to be able to connect my behaviour on the internet with my person, I hate it but they are the only people alive who can make me feel embarrassed and it seems I can do nothing about it. If it wasn't for my family (if they were all dead or something), then I wouldn't care much about hiding my identity, but I still wouldn't be splashing around my real name, because there REALLY is NO reason to do it, so even the 1 in a billion chance of getting a crazy axe murderer to kill you because of a post you made on the internet is enough of a reason to NOT do it.

I guess you might have a point here. I have never even considered seeking real life or close friends over the internet, so I can't relate to this much. It just seems to me that you can always reveal your identity if you find someone you feel can trust, so it's m00t. Will someone really trust you less because you didn't use your real name from the start?

Because there would be certain topics you couldn't talk about if it was easily googleable. Even fairly innocuous ones.

You seem fairly passionate about this, so I wanted to address one particular thing you said in your post..

You don't feel being anonymous is "faking it" in its own way? I read this and was much more worried about the "big picture" scenario that you for some reason don't feel you can be yourself, whether it be in real life or on the internet.

Isn't that a much larger problem? Is anonymous user names on the internet really the right "fix" for the fact that you feel like you can't be yourself?

Ray

so you are saying that my recent milf porn rant in bbv4l would be frowned upon by future employers?

i see this as a non issue

how many times have i seen on her people posting on other peoples accounts whether at a live tournament or house in vegas and what not

shoot in college i don't know how many people came and went through my apartment and had chances to post joke stuff from my computer because i didn't have anything password protected (go ahead steal my student loans and debt, lol)

there's also the excuse of heavy medication, drug use, mental illness, and i think private joker mentioned being a screenwriter and using forums to create characters that think unlike he normally does

in my opinion anyone who uses anything from the internet that's not posted directly on a business/professional site in their decision making process in business should not be a role of power of someone in the first place due to obvious stupidity

Or my post 5 seconds after this original op where I posted its a beat that my wife doesn't find boobs attractive?

*shrug* If my employer is doing checks that deep and is going to decide my WORK skills based on random hilarity I post on a message board for fun... I'm pretty ok with not working for that employer. I'm damn good at my job, and if that's the criteria they are using, I'm not going to fit in anyways, so it was a good call.

Ray

Coolest reason for posting as not yourself I have heard yet. Joker, can you out any of your "gimmick" accounts for me? That would really interesting to see.


Ray

I have a pretty common name, so I could probably be pretty anonymous regardless, but I guess I've always thought, "better safe than sorry", with regard to all of the factors listed so far. Also in my profession I wouldn't want coworkers, or students to know the filth I've spewed in BBV4L.

No, not really. My real name really is not important at all on the internet. Seriously like who the **** cares!

Like I said, I wouldn't be making any effort to hide my real name, if it wasn't for the possibility of my family finding out things about me I don't want them to find out. They would consider me a total creep. This is a fact. If I were to reveal my real person to my family, it would be about the same as cutting all ties with them (because I don't want to be around people who think I have mental issues). Mind you, I might actually do something of the kind eventually, but I'm only turning 20 and not even financially independent yet.

Not splashing my name around but not making any effort to hide it either I do not consider faking in the slightest.

People (at least in Estonia??) are extremely narrow-minded. I have a seemingly unusual personality to begin with, and on top of that I ignore a lot of social rules (I'm confident for an example you do not, at least not nearly to the extent I do). Because of this, the vast majority of people will consider me somewhere between being a weirdo to being downright crazy. This definitely has its downsides. Not exactly coincidentally I do not mind these downsides nearly as much as the majority of people would, but I am not immune to them. So yes, I can't really be myself. Some things I hide even on the internet in some places.

Give me an alternative?

LOL. How many people do you think are able to say the same?

EDIT: Seriously dude, tell me at this moment, with how many of your friends you would feel comfortable finding out
*) what kind porn you jack off to
*) what techniques do you use to jack off
*) that you had a dream about giving a handjob to a dad (assuming you did have one)
?

Furthermore, how comfortable would you feel about your family finding out about this?

If the honest answer is that you would feel comfortable then you must be surrounded by creatures from another species than those walking around over here.