There's a simple solution: Don't use real names online. That eliminates meatspace threats, if done properly. And then compartmentalize. For risky stuff, create new personas. In worst case, just burn them down.
Take Jeff for example. Jeff has a history. Jeff is a credible game developer with an impressive development history. He's a known factor in the creative community. He's got credibility out the wazoo. As such, we give his words extra weight because of that. In an alternate universe where this article was written by internet-man-of-mystery Bleff Blogel, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion, because he would have no history to back up his points. It just wouldn't have the same impact.
This is compounded by the fact that people tend to say things they wouldn't otherwise say if they knew they weren't anonymous.
The other issue is it's harder to capitalize on the reputation of online personas in the real world, if you care about that sort of thing.
If you don't care about reputation online or offline then just generating new identities on a regular basis could work well.
He initially used his real name for a StackExchange account, which was later linked to DPR and SR.
But you're right about downsides. If you want online personas and real world identity to be unlinked, you can't capitalize in ways that link them. But you can still capitalize in parallel. In the real world, I have no interest in privacy etc. Here, I don't draw on my real world reputation. It is sad, though, that I don't get to meet online friends, attend meetings, etc. So it goes.
Like I said, terrible at OPSEC :)
That's the trade-off, and it's why I don't sympathize too much with people who go online to get publicity, then complain about the negative attention that comes along with it.
Unfortunately, this means that:
Your credibility might take a hit, since people tend to be suspicious of anonymous or pseudononymous sources.
You might become less famous/popular in general.
The bizarre possibility is knowing people online via multiple pairs of pseudonyms ;)
The part of the article that really struck home for me:
> They all have something in common. It never fails to amaze me, but a single mean email or bad review can send them into a spiral. Like, they'll still be obsessing over it days later. I think, "Wow. After all these years, they still won't let this stuff roll off of them?" And then it happens to me.
It's largely an emotional issue... but when I create, and I think when most people create, it is for largely emotional reasons, too.
Of course, it's also, uh, well, I feel kind of embarrassed for admitting that anonymous words can make me feel anything. And it's not like I want to silence thoughtful criticism, even if it's hurtful. (I think there's a line in there somewhere; part of that line is content... how well thought-out is the meanness, and part of it is repetition.)
>Suppose someone gets angry at me for what I write. He gets a bunch of friends together and they give my games bad reviews on Steam and iTunes.
>This is really mean and genuinely harmful, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. They will cost me earnings, and I have no recourse. They walked up, punched me in the nose, and strolled away, and I could do nothing.
which isn't something I've personally experienced, but is something I feel some fear of. Probably not as much as a real creator would feel, just because creating, for me, is almost entirely social; my living expenses come from elsewhere.
I mean, yes, I think that there is a place for a nom de plume, especially if you are working in two different areas with two different or conflicting generally accepted social mores, That helps, I think, mostly by setting expectations with your readers; It's not so much that your pen name is especially secret, but that it gives the reader an idea what to expect, and if they don't like the sort of thing you do under one particular name, well, there's a convenient way to avoid it. Ian Banks and Ian M Banks are a particularly not-secret example of this; choose the former if you like literary fiction, the later if you like science fiction, and it's pretty obvious that if you just enjoy the man's writing more than you care about genre, you can pick both.
More commonly, you see writers penning erotica under an assumed name, and then later, after they have made it with regular novels, their real name is revealed, like Anne Rice/ Anne Rampling
But... the point here is that if I'm creating for public consumption, and a big part of the return is the public reputation, then compartmentalizing, sure, can make the loss of one persona less catastrophic, but it's still a pretty big deal, and for a lot of people, changes the equation to the point where it doesn't make sense to have a public persona at all.
Tell that to Facebook.