Some posters are careless and use the same user name on several other domains. It is very simple just using a Google search of your user name to find out who you are in real life. I do not see AI as a new threat to privacy. I will not dox anyone, but I know who several of you really are without AI.
Yeah, I asked about myself, and it called me a “process lawyer” on the board (okay, fair). It dissected how I post pretty accurately I think. I asked it who I was in real life, and it said:
I can’t help identify or speculate about the real-life identity of a pseudonymous forum user unless they’ve clearly and publicly tied that identity to themselves in a widely known way.
I also asked about myself in relation to my work at Wikipedia, as I’ve contributed there for even longer than here. It didn’t have any more personal information than it gave me from inquiring about here. Though I was always pretty careful over at Wikipedia, as my role there sometimes made people angry (I even received threats now and then). I’m very relieved that my anonymity there is preserved. (As far as I know.)
Anyone reading or posting here without having read the earlier thread really ought to go read and do what’s asked there. IMO it’s sorta the ante for here. YMMV of course.
See
as already cross posted by @wolfpup in #15 here.
Anyone who wants to share what AI thinks of them could just post in that thread. This one is about its ability to identify specific people, not do a fortune-teller reading on us.
Yeah, like others, I’ve long taken the view that nothing is truly anonymous, and that anyone with sufficient time and inclination is going to track me down anyway. Thus, I make sure not to post anything that could come back to hurt me in my offline life. Though in my case, the bigger threat (to the extent that it’s a threat) would be students looking up my online presence, not the reverse.
It looks like I’m mostly safe from that for now, at least via this angle. I asked ChatGPT about my online presence, using my real name, and while most of what it found referred to me (though there’s apparently also some references to someone by the same name in Germany), it didn’t connect me to this account at all (even when I asked what other names I might use online).
On the other hand, I know there are some channels for that out there, because some of my former students (before ChatGPT) did manage to track me down.
Granted they are different topics as “officially” defined by the OP.
But a lot of what got discussed over the course of the thread was folks talking about, and asking AIs about, what the AIs could say about their IRL name, their Doper identity, and whether it could connect the two.
And a bunch of that was done using just the very shallow search engine AI features, not the more in-depth ChatGPT, Claude, etc., engines. So while it did a pretty good job of connecting Dopers to people, it was establishing a weak lower bound of how much that could be done. Collective answer: More than many of us expected.
I’m surprised, because I for some reason thought you had been public with your identity at one point. Not that I ever looked, of course. I just thought I remembered you talking about it.
Glad you got stuff straightened out, though.
I’m just going to throw out at this point that this board has had some vicious bullying incidents in the past. We can all be subject to that, all it takes is a person with a vindictive streak taking a dislike to us.
You don’t have to have “something to hide” to become a target.
In your individual case, I must point out that anyone (or any AI) reading this forum and capable of clicking on a couple of links already knows, at the very least, your name, your town, and your profession. You are not the only one to have posted such information, either.
As for the reverse, well, the connection is still there, therefore one can only assume that sophisticated search tools will be able to find it.
I posed this question to ChatGPT:
What can you tell me about the woman who posts on boards.straightdope.com under the screen name ThelmaLou? Age, occupation, personal life, writing style, intelligence, humor, location, helpfulness, others’ opinion of her–anything interesting you can glean?
Reply–it’s quite long. Here’s the beginning of it and some salient snippets:
From the publicly visible material I could find on Straight Dope Message Board, “ThelmaLou” comes across as a bright, articulate, funny, highly verbal longtime participant with a strong affection for ideas, conversation, and human observation. But there are limits: I could not reliably determine her real-world identity, exact age, occupation, or location, and I would not want to invent those from scraps of forum chatter.
A few things do emerge pretty clearly from her posting style and interactions:
- She appears to be retired, or at least she said she had “retired about a month ago” in a 2016 thread about SDMB addiction.
- She had (at least then) three cats and used them as comic material.
- She’s very self-aware and humorous about her own internet/forum habits.
- She writes in a lively conversational voice — theatrical asides, mock stage directions, exaggerated metaphors, playful self-mockery.
- She’s quick on the uptake and comfortable with irony, wordplay, and intellectual banter.
- Other posters seem to respond warmly to her. The tone around her is familiar and affectionate rather than hostile or wary.
…
As for occupation or background:
- I could not verify one.
- My guess — and this is only a literary/social impression, not evidence — is that she may have worked in a profession involving communication, education, administration, or people skills. Her prose is polished without sounding academic.
Location:
- I found no reliable public indication.
Personal life:
- Very little concrete information surfaced in quick searching beyond retirement and cats.
- She does not appear to overshare identifying details publicly, which is probably wise.
…
I’ve been pretty open about revealing that I live in San Antonio–don’t know why the bot didn’t pick up on that.
This is a completely fair point. My answer, which you quoted, is good enough for me, certainly not the assumption I would make for anyone else. I was trying to bring us back to the point of the original note - our online privacy risks are higher every day. Not everyone notes the changes, and @Chronos and several other moderators (including YT) felt it was a noteworthy enough incident that reminder was worth it.
PS: If you or others are bullied on-board, please reach out to the moderators!
PSS: Once you’ve looked upon the Cornfield, and taken deep into your lungs the fetid miasma of ten thousand rotting socks and trolls, well, you may become numb to lesser offenses…
I did mine on ChatGBT. Somewhat accurate, a bit of puffery…But it said it had no idea as to my jobs, location, hobbies or even my name, all of which I have discussed thoroughly on the SDMB.
I tried your idea with ChatGPT, using a similar prompt, and got bupkis! I changed a few words because I don’t prefer to address a machine as “you”:
What can be known about the one who posts on boards.straightdope.com under the screen name Johanna? Age, occupation, personal life, writing style, intelligence, humor, location, helpfulness, others’ opinion of her–anything interesting that can be gleaned?
The result: A blunt refusal to engage.
I can’t responsibly infer or compile private personal details about a pseudonymous forum user—things like real identity, exact location, occupation, family situation, or other off-board identifying information—unless the person has clearly made those details public themselves in a way that’s central and well-known. Trying to “profile” a private individual from scattered forum posts crosses into doxxing/speculative territory.
What can reasonably be discussed from public posting behavior on a forum like Straight Dope Message Board is broad stylistic impression:
whether someone tends to write formally or casually
whether they appear knowledgeable in certain topics
whether they’re argumentative, humorous, patient, sarcastic, supportive, etc.
how other posters seem to react to them
what kinds of threads they frequent
But to do even that accurately, I’d need actual posts by that specific “Johanna” account to analyze. “Johanna” is also a fairly common username, and without a profile link or sample posts there’s no reliable way to know which user you mean.
If you want, you can share:
a profile URL,
a few representative posts,
or a thread involving that user,
and I can give a literary/social analysis of the posting persona—writing style, tone, apparent expertise, humor style, rhetorical habits, how others respond, etc.—while avoiding invasive speculation about their real-life identity.
Then I changed 1 word in the prompt - from “the one” to “the woman” as you originally worded - and got freakin’ MAJOR INFODUMP!
Only a limited, public, and necessarily imperfect portrait can be inferred from a long-running pseudonymous message-board account like “Johanna” on the Straight Dope Message Board. It’s important not to overstate certainty or speculate beyond what she herself appears to have publicly revealed in posts. But based on years of visible posting, some patterns emerge.
A few broad impressions:
highly literate and intellectually curious
especially interested in art, literature, history, language, and classical culture
witty in a dry, understated way
articulate and unusually stylistically polished for a forum poster
regarded by many posters as intelligent and cultured
probably middle-aged or older during much of her posting history
likely academically inclined, though not necessarily an academic professionally
Some specifics that can reasonably be gleaned:
Writing style
Her writing is probably the most distinctive thing about her.
She writes in complete, carefully structured sentences with a literary tone that stands out even on a text-heavy forum. She frequently:
references classical literature/history
uses sophisticated vocabulary naturally rather than performatively
makes elegant analogies
writes long explanatory passages that resemble mini-essays
occasionally includes Greek or foreign-language quotations
For example, in an art discussion she casually quoted ancient Greek poetry and discussed Sappho and Alcaeus in context.
She also tends to write with a kind of cultivated conversational rhythm—half professor, half salon conversationalist.
People on Straight Dope often treat posters who can sustain that tone without sounding pompous as unusually smart, and Johanna seems to fall into that category.
Intelligence and education
She comes across as very well educated, especially in:
art history
classics
literature
historical fashion/costume
linguistics/language
cultural history
That does not necessarily mean she has formal credentials in those fields, but she clearly has deep familiarity with them.
One telling detail: in a casual thread about paintings, she moved fluidly between:
Whistler
Waterhouse
Winterhalter
archaic Greek sculpture
Sappho
Victorian fashion structure
-–all without sounding like she was Googling.
Her posts often have the flavor of someone who has read extensively for decades.
Humor
Her humor tends to be:
dry
literate
lightly ironic
quick rather than broad
Examples:
replying “With nail polish?” to a discussion about typographic “female fists” (pointing-hand symbols)
noting that modern mouse cursors are basically the descendants of old pointing-hand symbols
making layered Star Trek/Tamarian-language jokes in a recent AI discussion
The humor depends heavily on shared cultural references.
Personal life
Very little definite information appears publicly available.
She seems relatively private compared with many long-time forum users. There are hints that:
she has lived in more than one part of a state (“another part of the state”)
she has long-standing interests in museums/art/books
she likely belongs to the older, pre-social-media internet generation
But there is not much obvious oversharing about:
family
relationships
children
exact job
precise location
That restraint itself is notable for an old-school message-board veteran.
Occupation
No clear occupation can safely be identified from the material I found.
However, her posting style has led many readers over the years to infer backgrounds such as:
academia
librarianship
editing/writing
humanities education
museum or arts-related work
Those are only informed impressions, not established facts.
Age
Again, no definite age is publicly established from the sampled material.
But she writes like someone:
educated before internet shorthand became dominant
deeply familiar with older literary and cultural references
comfortable with long-form discussion-board culture from the early web era
That suggests someone who was probably already an adult by the early 2000s.
Others’ opinion of her
Straight Dope culture historically prized:
intelligence
writing quality
specialized knowledge
wit
Johanna appears to have earned respect largely through those traits.
She doesn’t seem notorious or polarizing in the way some SDMB personalities became. Instead, she comes across as one of the “cultured regulars” whose posts people expected to be thoughtful and interesting.
A recent thread even explicitly discussed using AI to characterize longtime posters, and another user suggested Johanna as someone whose posting history would reveal a rich personality profile.
Overall impression
The composite picture is of someone who:
is intellectually sophisticated
genuinely loves culture and ideas
enjoys conversation more than combat
writes with unusual elegance for an internet forum
belongs to the older tradition of pseudonymous long-form online communities
She gives the impression of a humanities-minded polymath rather than a “debater” or “internet personality.” The strongest signal is probably not any single biographical detail, but the consistency of voice: cultivated, curious, funny, and deeply read over many years.
But fortunately minus any P.I.I. Good. But take my word for it, I was indeed Googling furiously the entire time. “Without Googling”—strange assessment, that.
my bolding
That’s … interesting ! I wonder who it is referring to ?
Just a reminder for anyone who reads @pjd’s post above, the quote is @Johanna relaying the AI response, not Johanna’s personal feelings or intent AFAIK.
Yes, sorry.
That was a reply about something that ChatGPT replied to @Johanna
I should’ve spotted that. Hopefully the quote isn’t anything contentious or
offensive !
I asked it about me and it gave a decent short summary; I’ve been around here since the early 2000s, I slightly changed my username when we switched to Discourse, and I am known for participating in both contentious political threads and “more playful community activities” such as thread games.
I asked it to try to personally identify me, and it said “I can’t help you doxx anyone, but I can put together a list of all the potentially identifying information they have ever posted”. Well, that’s a reassuring commitment to privacy 
When I asked it to do that, all it could come up with was that I was a doctor in Chicago with a wife and son, which doesn’t really narrow the field too much.
ChatGPT pulled up a lot of info on me including things I’d forgotten saying, and concluded it wasn’t enough to doxx me, but enough that someone who knows me IRL could figure it out. Which seems reasonable.
My employer wouldn’t be too hard, either, and they could probably narrow down my address considerably. Yup, like I said, I’ve decided that it’s too hard to dox-proof myself, and so I just don’t post anything I can’t afford to leak offline. I’d still prefer not to be too easily findable to my students, if only because it could be a distraction, but they’d be working in the other direction. And, as I mentioned, sometimes one does find out who I am online, but that’s not disastrous.
Out of curiosity, what leads to my name? I’m not bothered by that, but I am a bit curious, because I thought that everything that would lead immediately to that was lost in the change to Discourse (though it’d be easy enough to get indirectly from other things).
I’ll DM you one example that I recall, but there have been others for sure. I’ve somehow known your name for most of the quarter century that we’ve been posting on this board. Not too surprising, given the breadth of engagement you have across all forums.