[macNchz]

I have an uncommon name—as far as I can tell there's only one other person using the internet who shares my name right now. That raises the stakes quite a bit...even using full real names, the majority of people have a small extra layer of obscurity: there are a bunch of other people around the world with the same name.

I liken using my real name online to having all of my in-person conversations be recorded and broadcast on TV. If I go to a bar down the street and meet some strangers from my neighborhood, I'm fairly anonymous, and our conversation is decently private. I can express unpopular opinions and have no record of it. I'm not on the record, and I don't have to wonder what everyone I know and everyone I will ever know might think if they Googled me and found that conversation. If I go on a neighborhood blog and have the same conversation in the comments with my real name, I have the ear of, potentially, the entire world.

So I use my real name some places, and pseudonyms in others. Just how I might talk to coworkers, new friends, people at a party or business contacts without them instantly knowing everything I've ever said or done, having a pseudonym makes it possible to isolate your personal spaces online to some degree. It's usually possible to gauge the scope of how many people are privy to a real life conversation, so I try to achieve a similar setup online. I don't pretend that any of my user accounts online are at all truly anonymous, but they present a small barrier between online spaces. Much like meeting strangers in real life: they can probably find out who you are, but you are in control of how much information they have about you at any given momemt.