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I don't really want everything I post to be seen by current/future employers, work contacts, family or trolls in a way that readily connects it with IRL me.
I have said many things in the past online I would be embarrassed / awkward about saying to people in real life.
But in a practical sense, its useful for people to know who I am. Recent examples being; someone offering to lend me a bike because they figured out I used to work for their company, people finding my insta feed and visiting my exhibition, many people donating bikes and parts to a charity project, etc etc. All my online activity is connected these days, and it helps keep my tendency for arguments / meltdowns in check.
I've banned myself from Twitter now, but in arguments on there I would suddenly find I had to listen and engage if someone I knew IRL disagreed with me. With people you don't know, arguments become toxic and destructive much more quickly.
I get what youre saying about current / future employers. As freelancer I'm never a representative of a company per se, so not an issue for me.
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It's not about anything you post that might be embarrassing, it's about protecting yourself in case someone decides to fuck with you. There are a lot of deranged people out there and if someone decides they want to do you harm due to something you posted online, no matter how innocent, it's best not to let them be able to connect it to your real life. People have lost their jobs and more due to internet witch hunts that targeted an innocent person.
Can you really not imagine why someone would want to engage on the internet in a non-criminal, non-joke way and want to do it in a non-identifiable way?
I don't really want everything I post to be seen by current/future employers, work contacts, family or trolls in a way that readily connects it with IRL me. I don't take great pains to hide my identity but I also don't want to broadcast it with every casual utterance.