Connecting online and IRL identities

[Cramulus]

I'm about to start a website which involves Cramulus in the URL

I was going to use it as a platform to sell stuff and promote myself


but then I paused


is it wise to connect my Real Name with my Online Identity?


I'm not terribly worried about trolls finding out where I live or anything. What I'm really hesitant about is that employers could find out that I'm called Cramulus

and potentially, they could find this place, where they would be able to do a ton of datamining


that being said, tons of people I know IRL know that I am called Cramulus
I'm not really worried about employers finding out I'm a Discordian, I just worry about them finding out about my work ethic and illegal preferences through my posting habits.

but maybe I'm way overthinking this -- tons of people have connected their IRL identities to their shady online personalities and haven't gotten bitten in the ass

and i'm not even that shady

I don't intend on putting my IRL name on the website anywhere, but if you're really web savvy, you can figure out anything.

for example you could google image search cramulus and find pictures of me
or if you looked around for Discordian facebook groups, my RL name is easy to find.

So should I worry about this?

what do you guys think?

[LMNO]

This is a tough call.

[P3nT4gR4m]

A lot of things can jump up and bite you on the ass but, for the most part, they don't. Don't see why online alteregotism should be any different. You could get hit by a bus.

[Cramulus]

worst case scenario:

a current or future employer finds out that i am Cramulus, reads this board, and realizes I post while I'm at work, like, all the fucking time


the "future employer" part might be remedied by changing my name on here while I'm applying for jobs? or ... maybe I'm overthinking this ?

[Richter]

You could mitigate this with creative dissinfo.  Think AWS, jsut throw out so much other irrelevant noise that they can't say you are the ONLY Cramulus, or definitely doing that stuff.  Even a few false cramuli, from different countries, set up with more relevance to common google searches would invalidate all but determined datamining.

[Dimocritus]

I don't think it's a good idea. Y'know,'cuz we're kinda' like super-heroes, in a way. We hide our visage, select a new name, then try to change the world. Superheroes have to keep their identity secret, because any enemies they have would know where to find them, their friends, or family. Shit, look at what happened to Spider-Man when shit-head Tony Stark convinced him to reveal his identity. Nothing but problems. And I think Aunt May died... again.

[LMNO]

I guess the question is how explicitly you're going to make this link between your two names.  I mean, my real name is out there on my music, which includes the Spider Project, which links back here, which can be searched to link LMNO with my IRL name. 

But most employers would stop after seeing my reverbnation site; they wouldn't follow me all the way back here, unless they were interested; and if they're interested in that kind of stuff, then they're not really a threat.

[Adios]

Is the name link important and is what you are selling legal?

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

My boss once asked if I was so and so on facebook and mentioned that my page is really blocked from a lot of stuff.
I gave him a sideways look and said "Dude. Are you stalking me? That's just weird" and walked off. It was never mentioned again.

I think employers or future employers that go through the trouble of finding your online personalities are fucking creeps. And I don't mind pointing that out to them.

[Cramulus]

I guess the question is how explicitly you're going to make this link between your two names.

Good question. I don't plan on making it explicit, but some careful google fu will always reveal the truth.

It would be much easier to link identities if you already knew my IRL name.

Is the name link important and is what you are selling legal?

not important
not illegal



some scary data from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/more-employers-use-social-networks-to-check-out-applicants/ ..............

According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site. (The survey has no margin of sampling error because it was not drawn from a representative nationwide sample but rather from volunteer participants.)

...More than half of the employers who participated in the survey said that provocative photos were the biggest factor contributing to a decision not to hire a potential employee, while 44 percent of employers pinpointed references to drinking and drug use as red flags.

[Richter]

If an employer finds the pics of me carving a blood eagle out of Elmo and considers it a BAD thing, then I probably don't want to work there.

[AFK]

In my situation, I have a quasi public-service job.  It's the kind of job where I have to be careful about anything I put out for public consumption, even under my real name.  That is why I try to be very careful about the crumb trail between RWHN and [insert real name].  But this place, the history I have here is still pretty important to me as an individual so I can't ever totally disown it.

So I guess as far as employers are concerned, it depends on the kind of work.  If I were back in Retail Hell, I wouldn't care.  It wouldn't matter to the CEO what I was doing as RWHN.  But, the Feds seem to be a little more particular about those kinds of things.   

[Nephew Twiddleton]

It's still possible you would be found randomly anyway.
I was sitting at my cubicle one day and I get a phone call from one of my coworkers asking me to come by her cubicle. She was down the hall, so when I turned the corner I saw that a handful of my other coworkers plus supervisor were crowded around her cube. I walk up and they're gawking at me wearing a priest costume and playing my guitar with a cat-o-nine tails on stage.
This particular coworker was an old classmate of my ex-vocalist's fiancee, who took the picture.

Fortunately nothing happened but a laugh at my expense.

[Richter]

My co workers already know I'm not a standard model ape.  The chainmail in the back of my car, wearing a kilt to charity walks, and appearance at work in riverboat gambler garb sort of blew that image up.  Then again, I work among freaks, and they are comforted by knowledge that I have a wicked life outside my corporate persona.

[Juana]

I wouldn't connect them, but, I'm a little paranoid about this kind of thing. And there's a difference between general weirdness like Richter there and issues a future boss might have with you smoking weed or whatever. Weird is interesting while weed might just be the factor that knocks you off the list of candidates.

If you're worried about it, I'd refrain if I were you.