Is this recommendation based on anything? I agree, but it feels like a trivial fear, and I don’t have any (even anecdotal) evidence that this is necessary.
I do not think it is hard to figure out my identity, but I am trying to avoid a google search of my name bringing up
anything from LW.
(e.g. I do not put my name on my blog, or talk about it on facebook.)
As much as possible, you want to optimize what a trivial investigation of you brings up—like, for instance, an internet search with your name as the query. Putting anything anywhere under your real name cedes a lot of that control.
If you’re worried about nontrivial investigations, whether or not you choose a pseudonym makes very little difference.
As much as possible, you want to optimize what a trivial investigation of you brings up—like, for instance, an internet search with your name as the query. Putting anything anywhere under your real name cedes a lot of that control.
Actually it’s the other way around. If there nothing that you put up under your own name that’s well ranked it’s easy for someone else to put something up. Not putting up anything means having no control.
Perhaps I should have been more specific—every time you use your real name outside of a public-image building context, it becomes harder to build a public image associated with your name. I wasn’t trying to say that you should put nothing up—more that it should be something like what you’d expect a medical doctor’s official web page to look like. Not a stream of possibly controversial or misinterpreted posts on a web forum.
Is this recommendation based on anything? I agree, but it feels like a trivial fear, and I don’t have any (even anecdotal) evidence that this is necessary.
I do not think it is hard to figure out my identity, but I am trying to avoid a google search of my name bringing up anything from LW.
(e.g. I do not put my name on my blog, or talk about it on facebook.)
An empirical observation that people like to Google-stalk everyone they come into contact with, to start with.
Evidence of what, precisely? You don’t think that people google up, say, job applicants and then reject them on the basis of what they found?
Shit. I thought that I was the only one.
People do that?
People have too much time on their hands. Geez.
As much as possible, you want to optimize what a trivial investigation of you brings up—like, for instance, an internet search with your name as the query. Putting anything anywhere under your real name cedes a lot of that control.
If you’re worried about nontrivial investigations, whether or not you choose a pseudonym makes very little difference.
Actually it’s the other way around. If there nothing that you put up under your own name that’s well ranked it’s easy for someone else to put something up. Not putting up anything means having no control.
Perhaps I should have been more specific—every time you use your real name outside of a public-image building context, it becomes harder to build a public image associated with your name. I wasn’t trying to say that you should put nothing up—more that it should be something like what you’d expect a medical doctor’s official web page to look like. Not a stream of possibly controversial or misinterpreted posts on a web forum.
I think you’re not really looking. Richwine comes to mind as a recent example.
Sorry. I have not looked and did not mean to imply that I have.