[rudhdb773b]

I view posting online with a real name like getting a permanent tattoo.

My values or priorities may significantly change over decades, especially as a child, so why would I want to jeopardize the reputation of a potential future identity with something I may post today?

[hiAndrewQuinn]

One could just as easily make the opposite argument. Given that your values and priorities may change significantly over the decades, a smart investment now into a solid, stable, and prosocial public identity may reap considerable and wide-ranging benefits in ways you couldn't even predict. This is especially true if you take seriously the idea that it's not what you say but how you say it that matters in the end.

[Imustaskforhelp]

This is actually what I believe as well although I believe that its better to be pseudo-anonymous for me, right now.

In the sense that if I ever create any business/idea which can be serious enough that I want to back it up. I might create hackernews post about it.

Although that being said, I do sometimes make alts just to publish something if I don't want it under this particular account.

I do feel like I can be wrong, I usually am[0] but I think that I want to improve myself and perhaps this account can be a way for people to see me grow perhaps and sometimes fall as well. Life feels like a sin wave with ups and downs.

I have had some paranoid thoughts as to what if I get into controversy later on in life because of some things I do in my teen years but there was a line from a friend that I heard which said, "that anyone with more than 1 brain cell can figure out if a person has improved or not"

I do feel like authenticity is gonna be the differentiator if both code and infra aren't the bottlenecks. Perhaps authenticity can be treated as part of marketing but I feel like its also paradoxical to gain authenticity if you want to do marketing. Imo, a person has to be authentic for the sake of being authentic and only then and then can he also get some marketing benefits.

Authenticity means to share both good and bad (well as much as you can, I don't think one should be completely 100% authentic but rather only keep a few personal things to oneselves and even if they get leaked, then y'know just have the grace to accept it and considering that quote from above, I think most people will understand most things especially when you realize that there are people / (youtubers?) in the world who are part of serious accusations/controversies where I feel like most other controversies should be pretty non-issue fwiw.

Like my idea is being authentic enough to satisfy myself. If I become more authentic but if I feel unsatisfied/worried etc.,then that's wrong too.

[0]: (This is such a good quote from how to win friends that I use it quite often)

[hiAndrewQuinn]

You seem polite enough even psuedonymously, so I'd say you're doing a good job so far. :)

>I have had some paranoid thoughts as to what if I get into controversy later on in life because of some things I do in my teen years

I have a relevant anecdote, from back in halcyon 2008. Maybe it will help you when it comes to believing your friend, or at least it will temper your paranoia, which I think is well meaning in small doses.

When I was 13 or 14 years old I got suspended from high school because a friend posted a link to the Anarchist's Cookbook, which I had never heard of, on my Facebook wall. Some of my classmates got very scared and called the headmaster saying I had made a bomb threat against the school.

When the principal pulled me in to talk to me about this, it became very clear I had no idea what they were talking about. We talked for much longer than I think anyone in the room expected, maybe for three hours about existentialism, Zappfe's essay The Last Messiah which I had read the night before, whether I thought I was a victim of bullying (I didn't), what I thought of the school (excellent, a welcome refuge from a very turbulent home), thoughts on Cicero's speeches, the books we were reading in English class at the time.

I got "suspended" for a week and my parents took me to a therapist for several months afterward. I had thought after this for the rest of high school that my chances of ever going to college were totally shot, because a suspension appears on your permanent record. However, when it came time for me to actually apply to colleges, I found out no such record of the week at home ever existed. There appeared to have been a miscommunication all those years ago; I had actually been put on some kind of medical leave.

Now of course going through all of high school thinking that no college in the country will accept you now no matter how hard you do is going to change your incentives a bit. Ironically the very thinkers I had been reading at the time helped me quickly conclude that I wanted to do my level best anyway, even if there was going to be no payoff at the end of the road at all for me. In some ways it let me take more risks than my other classmates. I became the earliest person in my class to take our infamously hard physics course, and I walked out with top marks on both kinematics and electromagnetism. I don't think I would have taken that risk if I thought I had to optimize my GPA.

I trust you to think about this story and come to your own conclusions on how it moves your needle.

[ryanjshaw]

You can also argue that posting with a real name encourages you to reflect on your identity.

Or do both. Also post anonymously to see what kind of a person you are when masked, and compare.