That is the opposite, I would say. This is assuming the Internet is an extension of one’s resume.

But a colleague should understand anything under the call sign counts under, “noone cares what you do on the weekend”.

Dissociative Identity I’m sure is a disorder for those whose profession it is to diagnose, those who get paid for ’solving’ people’s life by putting a label on some condition that may be there for a reason (positive effects), and those who sell above mentioned drugs.

To those who choose to ’suffer’ from it, except extreme cases, it is not only harmless but beneficial to their well being.

I realize you were teasing but I wanted to make the serious point that we all have different patterns of behaviour. A basic example is that we can get asked the same favour from 2 different people and for one the answer will be ‘yes’ and for the other the answer will be ‘no’.

That’s completely essential to protect yourself against opportunists and parasites (the latter being purposely offensive and a form of opportunism harming the recipient) and is of course why DID is controversial.

I personally assert the ‘condition’ as I have suffered, medically speaking, from rejecting it and from so called ‘professional’ attempts to repair what I describe as an asymmetric response that I was unable to ’socially conceal’ (this is sometimes referred to as hypocrisy).

Anyway just chiming in to say that apart from my mother, girlfriend and employer (in other words those taking care of my well being in a significant manner) it is ‘Rogue’ so that’s obviously going to be ‘Rogue’ for everyone I will unlikely ever meet in person ;-)

It separates work and official stuff from friends.

He is different to who I am in real life.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a treatable condition and there are several very effective medications on the market.

I don’t know, Zac, I’m not sure this is making me less abbraisive.

I kid, I kid.

However more than once I have walked over to a crowd of gamers and gotten your that Thom? It was rather amusing.

I don’t “HIDE” behind any anonymity, and I’m not the kind of guy who will meet you or be interested in being met at a convention. I’m all for the option to be there, part of my name’s ALREADY in my handle, you won’t gain anything by knowing my last name–and you won’t “know me” by putting my name to my face so to speak.

The real issue as I see it would be the amount of persona that people seem to invest in these online thingees (or their “fandom” in general anyway). That seems to be what’s driving the anger, betrayal, etc. Look no farther than the fans of confrontation for examples. While I have been–and will be in the future–guilty of this as well, I’m cognizant of what unhealthy involvement is. And, I would think that in a very small way, adding your “real name” would make the experience more “real”, and cause an infinitesimally greater amount of investiture as the community consensus becomes that these little posts we make are less of a “side-light”, and more of our “real-life”. Cuz folks, if you’re not chatting with people you’ll ever play a game with–it’s not real life at all. How’s that for an ironic thing to say in this context? (i.e. none of you know me)

For this reason alone, I will stick with my nickname here and elsewhere. However if I had my time over I’d have probably used my full name from the start, as I am a lot less paranoid about identity theft than I was all those years ago.

There are certainly many people within various wargaming companies who know who the real Osbad is, and will (and have) hold me to account for anything controversial I may say.

My girlfriend attended a seminar with some experts who said this kind of thing is very, very common research for employers in her field of work (education) and seeing as I want to get into something like that, I want to be very careful.

Would you want to work at any place that wouldn’t hire you because if it?

Very good points. Until I *have* a regular employer where they may understand any eccentricities I may have (ahem) then I think I’d like to avoid any potential “Google mishaps”. :-)

The reason that our modern societies work so well is because they’re built on accountability and trust surrounding identity. It’s not easy to change your name on a whim, as it is on the internet. People can be trusted because they’ll be identified and held accountable by the rules (the laws) of society.

We could try to live out our lives strictly under nicknames, but it would be damn hard to live without a bank account and to receive income in cash only.

Unfortunately, because much of the early internet culture was developed by hackers (where fear of prosecution was very real), the pseudonym convention stuck.

Certainly there are merits to concealing one’s real identity from prospective employers and fraudsters. I think the former is largely a non-issue as most employers will be simply bored by looking at employee’s hobbies. And the latter concern is overblown. Identity theft happens primarily through good old-fashioned mail fraud. I know, I work in banking. Besides, the massive community benefits gained by using real names outweigh the minuscule additional fraud risk. Go back to the previous example….you could eliminate the risk of fraud be never giving your name, but would you want to life that way?