Do you go by a pseudonym or your real name (or both) for your online presence?

I go by a pseudonym online AND in real life. I’ve done so for about 20 years so there are probably a dozen or so non-relatives who know my “legal name”.

Growing up reading piles of cyberpunk novels and being in the illegal rave scene of the 90s combined to make me pretty presciently paranoid about real vs online life.

So basically if you google my “real” name I’m invisible. Pretty sweet for things like background checks plus it lets me abandon my online persona pretty much instantly if needed.

for tildes, i think you can assume my case haha

The reason I use my real (first) name on the internet is just probably that I didn't grow up playing online games, so I didn't have a gamertag that anyone ever addressed me by, and so never really developed a cohesive online persona. But nowadays I'm kind of interested in the idea that we construct a kind of image of ourselves through comment histories, posts, likes, whatever else; one that's not just shaped by the content being interacted with, but also by how we want to be perceived both by other users and by recommendation algorithms. The Evie of the physical world is so different from the Evie of, say, Instagram that it feels a bit jarring at times to use the same name for both.

For the majority of my social media accounts- other than Facebook- I use a pseudonym. I grew up in the era of "Never use your real name online", and it just feels like good advice.

The only other exception is my Insta account- and that one IS for building a brand, even though I don't have a business with it.

My life is very compartmentalized, maybe to a fault. If I could, I wouldn't have a central identify at all, online or otherwise. People are awful, always making terrible generalizations and trying to figure each other out with terrible assumptions and often arriving at some kind of reductionist synthesis which is usually negative and they always get it wrong. I don't wish to give any more information than strictly required.

You may call me a hermit.

I very much enjoy people in isolation, but groups must be handled with care.

So yeah this is not my name. Or is it? :P

I'll use both, and keep them separate. My real name is unique (thanks Ellis Island renames!), so if you know it, it's real easy to find out everything. If it's not important to know the "real me" I do try to take steps to mask. Especially now that I have kids.

That said, my opsec has been lazy, I've not rotated names for most things in 20 years. This name is harder to google, but anyone determined to hunt me down could almost certainly connect the dots.

The only people I specifically avoid sharing my handles with are co-workers. Most of my extended family doesn't know them, but mostly because the topic never came up.

Not building a brand, though I am expanding my real-name usage professionally so that I'm more visible outside LinkedIn.

Edit: Hurrah, looks like I'm no longer unique for real name. Thanks Ellis Island and extended cousins I've never met!

I generally only use my name (or derivatives) in a professional context, or contexts that could be professional (e.g. my primary GitHub account). Everywhere else online I go by a pseudonym. A couple of people I know were at one point aware of one of my pseudonyms but I don't usually share that information.

I don't really have an online brand so I can't comment on how my habits have affected that. If I were to to develop one it'd probably be centered around my real name because I think (perhaps mistakenly) that doing so would be more conducive to landing jobs, gigs, etc.

An interesting thing is that this use of pseudonyms as a form of anonymity is likely something that's mostly limited to boomers and millennials. In general, I think that zoomers and younger are much more closely associated with their online identities - it's just the form of websites that are popular now as opposed to yesteryear.

Anonymous usernames is really much more effective with long form text, like forums, usenet, reddit, whatever. But even if you do have a username that doesn't indicate your actual personage, does it matter much if your account is littered with videos of you, ala TikTok? Or photos of you, like in Instagram?

I don't think that's necessarily good or bad thing. It's just a thing.

One look at any thread in Tildes will tell you that well over 99% of people here are using names that are not the ones on their birth certificates. Don't you agree... "Bug Smith"? ;) And it's similar on Reddit.

I will not use my real name for any internet forum where I can't totally control the audience for what I write. Facebook, yes: I can set the privacy on that site, and control who sees what I share. Every other site - Reddit, StackExchange, Discord, Tildes - fuck no. I know what crazies are on the internet, and I do not want those people tracking me down in real life. I've received death threats on Reddit, and had stalkery teenagers declare they've got a crush on me. Neither of those sets of people are allowed to know my real identity.

As for my pseudonyms, I have a couple, and they each have their own separate non-overlapping areas of interest. They're like brands-cum-personas.

I created /u/Algernon_Asimov for Reddit, and I use the same username on StackExchange and Tildes. There was even a time where I went around a few different websites, creating an "Algernon_Asimov" username on each site - after some Reddit troll created an "Algernon_Asimov" account on another website and started posting some very hateful vile stuff using "my" name. That's when I decided to lock down this name and its reputation across the internet. I've been using this name for 12 years (as of 22nd June). I've come to identify with it. If someone called out "Algernon" on the street, I would turn around! I take care of my "Algernon" persona and its reputation almost as carefully as if it was my real name. Some people use many disposable online accounts that they throw away after a few months. I believe in continuity and building a reputation, for better and worse. "Algernon" is real. He's a big part of me.

I have another Reddit username (... "B"?) that exists across multiple platforms (not Tildes), for different interests. It's a mild case of split personality: each online persona has a different section of my personality. "Algernon" represents the majority of who I am, being primarily my intellectual side - he covers my interests in reading, movies, news, politics, religion, philosophy, and so on. When necessary, I've created other sub-personas for more niche requirements, but "Algernon" and "B" cover about 90% of my online activity. These days, even my real-name Facebook account doesn't get as much action as "Algernon" and "B"! On the internet, I exist mostly as a pseudonym.

I generally don't tell my real-life family and friends the names of my online personas. Mostly, that's because my real-life family and friends just aren't interested in the websites I frequent. Also, just as I don't want online people tracking me down in real life, I wouldn't want real-life people tracking down my personas online. They're separate entities.

All of mine are fabricated and unique usernames site to site. As for any personal information, I like to go by Bob Smith, because that was the world's most common name last time I looked it up, which makes it a needle in the haystack situation inside any tracking database. We are legion. It's more wholesome fun for any three letter agencies.

Carighan is my by-now long long used online persona that was original a drunken typo of the Aes Sedai (from the Wheel of Time novels) Caraighan Maconar when trying to name a character in EQ1.

It stuck somehow, and by now when speaking English I refer to myself as "Cari" IRL by reflex, and react to the name, too.

I have a variety of pseudonyms I use depending on what the account is for. I've done my best to keep each online identity as separate as I can, but depending on which one it is I let my real identity closer / keep it further away. Dread Pirate Red is relatively near my real identity, as I was originally using it as a pseudonym connected to projects and game dev. It's sort of become my "default" these days though, as I have less time for those actual projects but used the associated emails and accounts more and more. I don't care very much about anyone figuring out who I am from this name, and have others I use when I am more worried about privacy. My real life identity is nearly non-existent online simply because of my dislike for social media, and if someone finds it they'll find a very boring person with most privacy settings turned on.

On the other hand, I rarely share my online names with people in real life, and have specific ones I never share and specific one I share with friends vs family. I don't mind if anyone does some sleuthing and connects the dots, but I don't have much of a desire to tell Bob "Hey, here's what you google to find all my online interactions and projects!"

Anything professional (just GitHub and LinkedIn tbh) use my real info, but for all my personal accounts like Twitter, Steam, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, etc. I don’t share ANYTHING willingly

I run a business. That businesses has an online presence, and I'm there in that presence under my real name. Aside from that, I try to have different names for different purposes. A social media name, a gaming name, etc. If someone was really digging they might be able to find connections between them, but I don't see why I would benefit from a consolidated internet persona.

As mentioned in the April intro thread, I've gone by Protected for 24 years (conveniently ungoogleable!) I also go by my longer, more unique Steam username on a few services, but google is so bad these days, or I'm so irrelevant (likely both?) that my association with that word doesn't come up at all either.

My real name is also incredibly generic in my country (both first and family name). In my specific university and campus, during my first year, there were three of us. Also ungoogleable! Good thing I'm not trying to build an online presence or brand!

I mostly keep these identities separate. A handful of people online know my real name (they know not to share), and a handful of IRL friends know this username (they really don't care; they don't lead online lives).

I use unique handles on certain services for a variety of reasons:

• Often, Protected also "belongs" to me on the service but can't be used because of technical issues with the platform's registration process or an upgrade locking it in an irretrievable manner (surprisingly common).
• Sometimes, Protected was banned from the service. I will maintain that this has never happened fairly, from my perspective at least.
• My steam username can often not be used because platforms have restricted usernames to very short maximum lengths. It's too long even for the orange website, which has a 16 character limit for no good reason I can perceive (nerds like powers of 2 I guess?)

I always favor short, preferrably one or two words, no numbers, no spaces, no abbreviations, no special characters.

I am Thrabalen. And I am Thrabalen pretty much everywhere I am online. It goes back to the days of AOL chat, and the Red Dragon Inn, a Freeform RP chat room where you could make any character you pleased. You could have a Space Marine sharing a table with an elf. And there I was, my Forgotten Realms cleric named Kindra Thrabalen (a surname I invented from whole cloth because it looked D&D-ish.) And ever since, Thrabalen is who I be.

There are people I've known online for a decade who only know me as Thrabalen or Balen. People I voice chat with. People who I've sent Christmas presents to. It's likely that, due to personal issues, it's the way things are going to be more or less forever.

I usually use python-b5, which I came up with as a kid when I was learning Python and decided that would be my entire personality from then on. I was able to get my actual name here on Tildes, so I used that instead.

I was once interviewed for someone’s master’s thesis on gender identity (I’m non-binary). When I got it back to read, they changed my name for anonymity to “Delphi”. Stuck ever since

Pseudonyms only. I change them up every few years, not for any reason other than growing bored of them. Some real life friends and family have known them over the years.

I did have a brief (relatively) spell on social media like Myspace and Facebook using my real name but that was a peer pressure thing at the time, as a 20 something at the time of those website you basically had to be on them for a social life.

It did always feel strange though, I grew up with the growing internet and web and I remember distinctly the sensible adults always making the point that you should try to maintain anonymity as much as possible. Not everyone did of course but the use of nicknames/handles/pseudonyms was widespread, encouraged and entirely normal. As a child or teen often engaged in IRC (as was the style at the time) you were also pretty wise to keep age out of it, the internet really was the wild west in the 90s.

I generally don't like putting my real name out there if I can avoid it although the internet is of course a very different place in 2023, you are never anonymous (and never really have been) but I do find myself clinging to those early behaviours and thinking it was a much better idea than what many websites came to expect from me.

edit: I do distinctly remember making a very early mistake online which actually got me into trouble from my dad. Amusingly it is still discoverable! a 1993 Usenet post, by me which gives my full name, age (young) and location saying hello to the internet and discussing what I would like to do with my life. I think this was when I got a lesson about not sharing personal information online and it's actually quite prophetic that it's still there, permanent and searchable.

Depends on the platform. I primarily use /u/drannex or /u/drannex42 as my username for most places, it's linked to my personal identity fairly easily but still gives a veil of some sort of immediate pseudonymity.

Tumblr, where most people choose to keep their privacy (for good reason), I go by my first name @macleod, and that is really well-known over on that platform. I used to run a 'media' company (network of blogs) and building a "personal brand" was really popular. I sold off most of the blogs and company a few years back, but kept that particular blog.

I go by “fook” or “ifook” everywhere now. My old username was too long and I wanted to shorten it so I took the first part of it and just ran with it.

I have one irl friend who does know my pseudonym, I have known him for almost a decade now, He was around when I came up with my pseudonym and we travel the same sites and what not so they have seen me out in the wild a time or two.

I used to use a super unique pseudonym online that would show up as me for the first couple pages of a google search. Now I choose pseudonyms that are difficult to google. Many of my IRL friends know my pseudonyms because I game with them, but I don't necessarily give them my social. I regret using my real name in twitter but I've since deleted all my social media accounts that had my real name associated with it.

If I were younger thinking to build an online presence I think I would go along the route of Vtubing where I can still remain anonymous while presenting an interactive avatar to the community.

I've been going by my real first name for some time now. Except when I don't want to. That applies online and off. Sometimes I use different names because I want to keep certain things separate and sometimes just for fun.

It's tricky getting three letter usernames though. I managed it here, and on Twitter too. Not so much FB/Reddit/etc.

The only account I have that has my real name is Facebook, which I rarely use and which has very little info about me. Otherwise I use pseudonyms, I try not to reuse names between accounts and I’ll remake accounts every few years on places like Reddit. The names are generally connected a little bit by theme. In that I tend to pick references to books or authors I like. I basically never share the names with people in real life. I’m quite obviously a little paranoid but it’s more of a philosophical position than anything else. I’m moderately hard to track down in general and still lack a credit score even as I approach 30. I don’t take these positions so far that I exclusively use cash or only work under the table however.

So when I started using the internet, it wasn't common for people to really dig deep into people's history and socials to figure out who they are. I've tied my username online to my real life identity a lot. So much so that when I sign up for new social sites, I stay away from my older usernames to distance myself from that where I can. The name I'm using here is part of my username on reddit, Google, and other sites but on those sites it has numbers at the end related to my real birthday. If I can get "Bossman" somewhere, I take it because it's generic enough that no one will know it's me from a search.

I use a pseudonym, and I have used this one in particular for almost 20 years. When I first made my way on to the internet, I made an account on the LEGO website so I could save progress on some of the games I liked to play. In deciding on a username, I thought "Redwall is my favorite book series, and my favorite character is named Matthias, so I'll pick that." Obviously, that was taken, but the site suggested appending a 720 on the end, to which I basically went "Okay, sure. That sounds cool." I've simply used this moniker ever since.

All right, I'll be the weird one. This is my real actual name. There have been a couple of times that my username being ny name has been problematic (death threats calling my house, thanks Reddit!) but generally it's not a problem.

My user name is a very simple combination of letters from my "real life" name. I like that you can't search my name and find this user name or vice-versa, but it also helps me feel a connection to this user name. I'm not hiding behind anonymity. I want to treat people online the same way I would treat people offline. I'm not trying to be someone else. Etc. Sometimes I feel a little anxiety about having accounts for so long, and I don't remember what I've said X years ago (I have a pretty bad memory for stuff like that), but I just acknowledge the feeling and move on. I try not to look to far into the past and resist the urge to delete old posts and censor it. I'm me. That's that.

Further, I've posted things on Reddit (where my user name is similar) that reveal my real name. Now that I'm thinking I'll spend more time on Tildes, I'm sure I'll eventually do the same here (if I haven't already?). I've posted details about where I live making it fairly easy to find me. I've thought about this a lot and have ultimately decided that I'm not afraid. If anything, I'm more afraid of people who live near me, but I'm not afraid of them either. I live in a rural area, and they assume I have guns (do I...?), and that's a fine deterrent. So ultimately my response to that is: C'mon over! Hopefully I'll have some beers in the fridge. I'll walk you around and show you my plants.

Eh I honestly adopted this pseudonym as a "fuck you" to someone trying to bully me when I was young. Just happened to set up my first email the day that they were poking fun at my (low as hell at the time) weight. Since then I stuck with it for things where I don't feel like I want a direct association with me. It's hardly super anonymous and I use others for things which could be more contentious or dangerous, but overall I find this one is a happy middle ground for me.

Have been using it for nigh-on 17 years now so it really does feel homely in some way.

I have a bit of both & some in-between.
I do some stuff

• Directly under my own name
• Under pseudonym that's known to be mine. (Github as an example).
• Other stuff under a pseudonym nobody knows is connected to me. I actually have 2 or 3 I use regularly.

For stuff like Github, its connected to my day job so trying to keep it private just isn't worth the effort. For others, i'd just rather not make it easy for stalkers, as from my GH you can easily get to my personal contact details/home address as i run a business from there.

I use the same username for everything online, this one. It doesn't take too much to find out who iteally am. I don't try to "hide" in a sense online, I've always just believed it not putting things online I'll regret.

IRL Ive always just gone by last name. But if you Google my name, nothing comes up for me since there was an NFL player with the same name.

I generally like to go by a pseudonym. I have a few of them but I like to go by this one.

I generally used my pseudonym everywhere online that isn't strictly professional.

I use pseudonyms online and keep them away from people I know, generally, except my SoundCloud, which I keep away from Reddit after deleting my 10-year-old account in 21.

It takes a lot of work to stay ahead of, say, Youtube's changes that keep trying to use my name to follow whatever the social media sites are doing.

I went by another pseudonym when I was younger. Usually I was referred to by the acronym of it. I got used to being referred to this by only my online friends.

Eventually, I started playing Dota 2 and TF2 with people I knew at school. My online friends and IRL friends mixed. Soon enough, people at my school were calling me this acronym when we weren't online haha. Many times I had to remind them that they weren't supposed to call me that in public.

I've used this since early internet days, from 3D worlds, to current. It's always been this due to my love of Star Trek, and that Data song.

I do not pass on my username to my family. I know people in it could find it as in some bits there is cross over, but I have stuff about some of my family and those people would not work it out unless I sent something with it in it. And I do not wish them to "follow" me and comment. Maybe online I live a bit more open about stuff than my offline life now. Anonymity afforded me that.

It doesn't reflect who I am, or what I think about, was purely a funny name I needed when usernames started to first be visual on things like boards, or as a "character". It used to be online was separate from offline. I didn't have a searchable presence that would lead to my name - paranoia reasons way way back; you should keep offline and online very separate and safe etc. But those lines have blurred nowadays with more and more offline content and information being available online, so I could be traceable online to whom I am now, vs back then when my real name searches were not linked in any way with my online names.

*Been online in some capacity for 20+ years.

The first MMO I played, Ultima Online, I used my real first name. Because my real name is fairly unique (at least in the US) and was actually in-theme with the game.

But beyond that one time, I've mainly stuck to using pseudonyms. My real name is not JC Phoenix; not even close. I have a few pseudonyms I rotate around, depending on the game or service. Some of them are even related to each other, in that the names are similar or influenced by each other.

However, I do tend to use my real fullname as a display name in my professional life and in social media that shows my real life (or as "real" as I want it to seem). So like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Even YouTube/Google, though I have a few other accounts that I can use when I want to lurk. I was on the social media team at my company back in the day, so it made sense to use my real name on Twitter and such. I think it'd've been strange and confusing if I used one of my screennames when interacting with customers and clients via social media.

Since my "IRL" social media is that way, I've tried to separate the pseudo-anonymous me from the real me. Though I don't always do a good job of that. It'd be pretty easy to dox me at this point. Pretty sure it's happened at least once so far.

I used to use Tygrak basically everywhere, but sadly I think it might be with some work linkable to my real world identity now. So I started to often use different names on other platforms. I think there also aren't many other Tygraks on the internet so it's not optimal when the names can all be linked. I try to use this username for at least a bit more professional stuff now. The benefit is that for example my games and stuff can be linked with my music or something, I guess it builds the personal "brand" or something (shudders).

Pseudonym for me.

I doubt I'm the only streblo out there, but it originates from this old gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNSnOZHINIU

For the most part, I use pseudonyms. In this particular case, I am using an anagram of (part of) my real name.

My username is a pseudonym in the sense that it's not my real name, but it's also an IRL nickname that a lot of people knew me by about 15 years ago. In fact, I suppose one could say that at a certain point in my life it kind of was my real name since it's what basically everyone I knew called me.

As seen from my Username, I am not named by my parents as Black_Gulaman.

This came about because I at first did not want my online activity being visible to my relatives (*wink wink). Yeah, teenagers, right?

then when I began work, I don't want my online activities to be visible to my employers, for obvious reasons.

My only mistake was Facebook. there I have my own name, I really did not think FB would turn out the way it did. I have stopped my activity on that site, but I know it's too late, they already have a sizeable chunk of my data and they know who my real-life acquaintances are. even if I have deleted my profile there, they can still track me simply through the post of my FB friends.

Pseudonym of geekphreek or g33kphr33k, which is a nod back to when I switched from being a terrible blackhat style pirate going by arckane and I changed over to a lighter shade of grey :)

I'm sure I'm super easy to dox, I've really truly hidden who I am and I run my old blog which has my name associated with it. My family know I use online handles, I've been on the net since the 90s when that was the only thing to do - You just didn't use your real name back then.

Contrary to what it may appear, this is a pseudonym. I feel like if someone in close to really tried, they could connect me to this account. One day I might remake myself…

Never in actual public have I been called by my username but it’s been blurred a bit over discord. I’ve got IRL friends whom I game with and will call me sleeper while I call them by their first names in voice chat. I prefer my actual name if the people I meet actually form a friendship outside online communities.

In most cases a pseudonym related to my real name. People I know may recognize it, but I don't care much.

For Tildes I just used my real given name because it apparently were free to pick.

Twitter is the only page where I use my full name. I'm not sure why exactly, but the statements, opinions and discussions going on there feels more like a public conversation. And most people I follow there also use their real name. The downside is that I often avoid controversial subjects.

By using my real name I wouldn't mind if one of my descendants one day after I'm dead find my Twitter and get to know more about me that way. Hopefully they can have a laugh of my crappy hot takes and stupid jokes. Just imagine you could read the day to day thoughts and opinions from your great great great grandparents. Their way to express themselves. Their reaction to historical events. Wouldn't that be cool?

Other than something like Facebook where I connect exclusively with people I know in real life, I'll never use my real name on social media sites like Reddit or Tildes. It's just not worth the drama. You never know when you'll say something that offends someone, and they start harassing you in real life, calling your employer to try and get you fired, etc. I very much want to protect myself from that sort of thing.

I've used my old handle so long at this point you can easily find my real name from it.
I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to connect my main handle either right now.

This one is a little harder

I have a user pseudonym and an artist pseudonym online. Its probably very easy to find who I am IRL with this username lol. A lot of real people definitely know that this username is me. What I find hardest on this topic is that when you learn the real life name of someone you only knew online by their username you will probably keep calling them their username for a long time lol. Know some real life people that still call my lightning instead of my real name

I typically use a pseudonym that includes my real first name, but makes it more unique and therefore available even if a platform has been around for years. There are sites on which I have usernames that are completely unrelated to myself, and I usually try to keep those fairly separate.

I go for nickname online but attentive and resourceful individuals might associate it with real name and a few real informations about me. I tend to behave online as I would in real life - not being asshole. I stand behind my words too. If I'm mistaken and someone points it out, I'm not the kind to delete my statement, rather stand corrected and thank for correction/enlightenment.

Never put anything close to my real name online, and I don't use a centralized username on any of my online accounts; ie if you search my username you are just likely to get a bunch of random people utilizing the same usernames. I sign up w/ fake birthdays to a lot of places that make bdays a hard requirement. I try to avoid making accounts many common places in the first place.

Sounds paranoid but really it's just bein' tired of dealing with shit & avoiding ad profiling based on age demographics 'n whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

psuedo online, always, and I use a different one for general internet vs. gaming.

My user name was IRL nickname from a business I used to run. It's convenient fpr keeping mostly anonymous, but anyone who knows me can always ask.

Nearly entirely pseudo, but on very rare occasion, real. I still have that (apparently) old-school mentality of “Never use your real name on the net!” from back before aohell had been invented.