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Comment by flatline | Hacker News Reader

For some reason I'm extremely hesitant to post things under my real name. I don't really care if people know my name on an individual basis (and it's not like I'm a high profile poster anyway), but I am squeamish about it generally, and feel too self-conscious to post anything if my name is associated directly with it. I've tried blogging under my real name and always went back and deleted everything, it caused me too much anxiety. I'm not like that at all in person. Are there others like me around here? I think it's the permanent nature of what goes online that bothers me about it - there is a freedom to pseudonymity that, when not abused, is quite wonderful.

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My opinions change regularly, I am sometimes enlightened, I sometimes have a change of heart. I don't post with my actual identity because of this.

I don't want a situation where someone stumbles onto an old post or where I played devil's advocate and I lose out as a result.

That may be a wise decision, but it's sad that the world has to be like this.

I kinda miss the old days of usenet, where I'd often post sarcasm or devil's advocate type comments with an

x-planation: Yes, this is sarcasm

type header.

Web forums generally don't have a way to attach metadata like that in a way that's not _normally_ seen, but is easily discoverable or demonstratable on a per-post basis.

The "Ha ha! I was only joking" defense is much more credible if you explicitly (but initially in a non-visible way) declared that up-front.

That's what /s is for! :)

I never knew that! I wonder if Google/Deja kept the headers.

You can do this with cryptographic hash functions. Here's how:

1. Write whatever "meta" comment you want to attach to your post and add some random characters at the end.

2. Calculate the MD5 or SHA-1 hash of that comment + random characters [1] and add it to the text of your post.

3. Save the comment + random characters to a text file somewhere for future use.

Should questions arise as to whether or not you were, e.g., being sarcastic you will be able to prove your intent by presenting the original comment and letting everyone verify its hash valve. As a downside you would also have to add random hashes to every non-sarcastic post of yours to prevent sarcastic posts from being quickly detected by the presence of hash values. However, if you do so consistently and post a lot I'd wager that people would soon stop noticing them.

This may or may not be an overkill for signalling sarcasm but I have seen a few users here on HN with MD5 (or was it SHA-1?) sums in their "about" fields. I can only assume those contain their real identity should they want to prove it.

[1] You can use, e.g., http://www.md5.cz/ for convenience.

cc2a84f549054aefc3870490d8250651

On the other hand, you are depriving us from the opportunity to see how your characters keeps developing and how your opinions change over time, which is actually healthy.

Maybe we do have this opportunity. His pseudonym just need to be old enough.

My opinions change regularly, I am sometimes enlightened, I sometimes have a change of heart. I don't post with my actual identity because of this.

I edit freely because of this. I don't care if other people hold old stuff against me; that's just people communicating with ghosts in their head. If someone has a serious problem with something I said, let them openly talk with me about it, or be counted among the people I just cannot be bothered to care about.

As I like to tell people: even human history is a HUGE thing compared to my own life, not to mention the universe. If I am lucky, I have 80 years to think and talk about all of it, and nobody, no boss, no relative, no friend, no life partner, could ever matter so much to me that I could completely swallow that thinking and talking, just because it might offend them. If in doubt, burn the bridges, think and talk freely, that's my motto...

I closed a lot of doors for myself with that, but I like the integrity I traded them for, I would not change a thing. Looking back so far, I would say anyone that ever mattered, didn't run away from the first misunderstanding, and not few friendships began with arguing over something with a stranger. On the other hand, the people who got upset about random superficial things, I don't really miss. So what could be better than having a website that filters some of them out, before we waste too much time and energy on each other?

Ditto. Deciding to use a variant of my name here was something I went back and forth on (partly because I didn't want it associated with me at all, partly because I didn't want it to be gendered [1]). Ultimately I decided that I wanted to be able to take credit for posts where I write about usability/design/anything else I feel qualified to speak to, even at the expense of potential employers reading the rest of what I write here. On the other side of the same coin, I don't put any personal information in my profile.

[1] One of, if not my very first, comment's first comment was someone using my gender to denounce my opinion, which had me trying to figure out if I should start fresh again. For the most part this only happens in gender issues threads (where sockpuppets and new accounts run rampant), but this particular one wasn't. I wasn't sure if that attitude was going to follow me throughout my time here, but I've found most people don't even look at my username (as evidenced by being referred to as "he" in child comments).

> One of, if not my very first, comment's first comment was someone using my gender to denounce my opinion

That sucks. I hope they were downvoted into oblivion, but either way, I know that kind of thing happens on HN and I wish HN were better than that. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Thanks. I'd spent a good chunk of time on the initial post itself, so I opted to just see what the community did instead of responding to it. Thankfully, it was downvoted quickly and two people responded to him directly about it.

In another post when I said I didn't want kids, I had about 5 replies insinuating I was risking my future happiness/purpose and I'd regret it in my later years. So.. there's still room to grow.

There's a funny cartoon (from 1996, no less) about the downside of posting on the internet.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GhostOfUsenetPostingsPast

I think the future will be one where we're split on this - not as a society, but individually. You will have your public persona and your private persona. I have to be public because I'm in news, but not everything I do has to be associated with my real name, and I take advantage of that when I feel like it. That ability and that habit will only become safer and more accepted over time.

I wish various sites were more supportive of this. Back in the day, Yahoo! groups supported multiple identities very comfortably, so you could be "yourself" in professional forums and "be" yourself elsewhere. I don't know about anymore since I haven't used them in years. But most other sites that support pseudonyms mostly still work hard to make sure you only have one, which does little to curtail the possible abuses thereof while making it painful to do so for good reasons.

I think we've always had multiple public and private personas. Many of us are not the exact same person around strangers than we are at home, or with friends. It's just that what's seamless and instinctive in physical space is often hard to translate into the 'net, and the big sites don't help at all.

In the future everyone will be anonymous for fifteen minutes -- Banksy

PhinisheD (http://www.phinished.org/) has done this for many years. You must have a user account to make posts, but if there are reasons to post anonymously, then you can do so by posting it as "AFT" - anonymous for this. Everyone has the same anonymous moniker, and it is clear when someone is posting anonymously.

I like this so approach so much that I've actually created AFT or numbered AFT accounts in several places where I don't want a regular username associated with the comment.

I also have themed usernames. Anything I post professionally goes with my real life name or a moniker known by my professional colleagues. I have several hobbies and several very different subjects that I'm trying to learn, and each of those have different associated usernames.

I thought that OpenID would support this concept, but it never seemed to (maybe I was missing some key concept?). Now I have hope that Mozilla Persona might fill this gap.

Not too this level, but i use a pseudonym here. I don't generally post inflammatory stuff but I do like a good debate. But I use my real name on twitter and am very careful about what I post. I use my real name on Facebook, but I am not so worried about what I post, it's to a closed audience so i can vent and be negative without being looked down on.

In this day and age of Google, you're just a click away and a whole bunch about you has been discovered about you even before an interview. I'm not a big flying hot shot, just a developer. Who know what will happen in years to come and it's difficult to wipe that public footprint.

Yeah, me too: the alias is a protection against a simple google research.

I'm very much like this. I create a completely different handle on every site I use. I simply don't use a service if my real name is involved: for instance, I completely stopped reviewing Google Play Store apps ever since the G+ integration. Even having my name publicly associated with some random app that I've used makes me really uncomfortable. It isn't really rational or anything, but it's nevertheless present. I'm just a private person I guess.

Same boat. I don't generally care on a case-by-case basis, but I don't like the idea of someone being able to trivially connect me to years of comment history. Always a chance I'll recant and regret something I said five years ago. Don't particularly want old mistakes or opinions I no longer hold to be on-tap.

That's me, as well. I think it's come from chronic Googling of Craigslist users that naively sent me emails under their real names, or even just searching by their emails, and I easily found information such as: one guy was listed in a court order with drug related gang violence, one guy had blog filled with info about his adventures "mail order bride-ing"...Some of the stuff was more embarrassing and less incriminating, but still. I've Googled people I've met before and been overly turned off by say, a small stupid youtube comment, or something like that.

I understand where the feelings come from, but I'm not that way. On the other hand, there are times that I feel like I have to limit what I say. There are some details that are too personal or that impact people I care deeply about that I don't want to have tied that closely to my real identity.

For those cases, I consider how valuable what I have to say might be and, if it is truly worth it (not very often), I'll create a throw-away. Of course, it isn't going to stop anybody truly determined, but it makes it harder.

I use a pseudonym derived from my first name, or whole name. Considering that even when open about my name I've been slammed for my beliefs, for disagreeing with someone (I was polite, so their response shocked me), and so on. I've done dumb stuff, smart stuff, etc.

I'm a fairly private person in person, but I'm far more open offline than I'll ever be online.

I've tried blogging under my real name and always went back and deleted everything, it caused me too much anxiety.

Same here. Burned already 2-3 blogs that way. Absolutely hate the idea of somebody judging me by my opinion from last year. Much easier to start from scratch and create a new first impression.

That's why I disassociated my real name from my HN account. I realized I'd posted opinions using this account.

I own my .com and have some stuff on there. I tend not to post strong opinions under my real name anymore.

Though, there are a few things on the internet that might suggest my political views, you'd have to dig to find them.

I feel much the same way, but go ahead and use my name in order to "force" myself to think a little bit more before posting on things, and I think it really helps the quality of my posts.

That's me - only I'm like that in person too.

Pseudonymity is exactly right.

I agree. For some reason I feel exactly the same way.

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