A bit of both. I stumbled upon some old stuff of mine that uses my real name, and I recently was thanked by real name on a website. My first instinct was to talk about both of these things in MPSIMS, but then I’d be outing myself.
But what made me ask was when Colibri explained his custom title, which involved a Straight Dope article with his real name. I was a bit shocked, as I’d seen so many people go out of their way not to reveal their identity on here. But then I remembered there were other people that were “out.” I figured I’d ask a few questions about why you guys are fine with it, as compared with the others that are not.
In hindsight, I probably should have formatted it where people who weren’t “out” could give their reasons, too, and used a better title, as I think there are people not reading it because they had the same interpretation as panache.
Why’d you choose to out yourself?
For a while I thought about hiding my name as much as possible, but over time it’s sometimes been unavoidable, and other times it didn’t matter. It’s a judgement call in each instance.
Has there been a big difference since you were out?
Not that I’ve noticed. Sometimes it’s nice to be called by my real first name.
Do you ever wish you weren’t?
Nope.
Have you ever worried about people stalking you or stealing your identity?
A dickhead did libellously spread my name around. As expected, it’s mostly vanished into history and was never a problem because nobody else cared, but I guess it was a minor inconvenience.
Like some others here, my username is my real name (well, my first and middle initials, followed by my last name). I’m not really concerned with that, in fact, I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I eschew quirky anonymous user names on the 'net (if you are still for whatever reason, that’s OK, I just feel I’ve personally grown beyond that). Not really worried about “stalkers” (I’m somewhat “remote” (by world standards) anyways). In fact, the few places I have left (like Wikipedia) where I user a “quirky username” (because that was what I was doing at the time) I kind of wish I could use my Doper username (ie more of a realname on it), partially because I’ve done some very good work there (like this) and I kind of wish I took credit for it.
The only place I do have a username, and wish it to remain so, is in an online anonymous support group - for obvious reasons, of course.
I don’t use my real name on a message board, since my name is very unusual and I’m the paranoid sort. However, I will sign my real name when I respond to a PM here.
I’ve mentioned my first name and surname in separate threads. Don’t think I’ve ever mentioned both at the same time.
Still, I’m the only person with my specific first/last name combo in the world (or at least the only one who’s been online) so you could stalk me easily enough if you wanted.
