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So weird to me. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Intuitively, I’d have believed pseudonyms worse - but the “stable” part may be carrying weight in the study, too. It’s still “identifiable” over time. Of course, regardless of any study, there is always Catturd2…

Huh. Interesting. It's like, building a consistent persona online, divorced from you (at least by name) means deliberatively deciding what reputation to make for yourself. Maybe. What do I know. But I did have an OG blog back in the day that allowed comments via pseudonym. Ppl mostly were ok.

Right? Like I like my RL name, but that's my GOVERNMENT identity. Rust is just who I am.

Gosh, what was that word from a long time ago? Began with a "B"? Bbbbbb…rand? Brand? Yes! That was it, "personal brand!" It's almost as if the people talking about personal brands during the era of the blogosphere were not entirely bonkers. Is Doc Searls on this thing yet? :-)

yep! its not that surprising really. people have a natural tendency to create multiple social identities based on context even offline (lots of research here) making them durable *while anon* adds self-buy-in, and allows for more consistent group identity behavior and regulation (Tajfel&Turner) 🙌

even more important now when ice and feds are showing up at people's homes for their critiques online.

@trans.bsky.social this was the study I was thinking of a day or two ago, with your post of the x2 scene where magneto asks for iceman's xmen-name and why mystique stays her real self

Or, alternative competing theory: maybe we actually perceive our real names as being the more anonymous option, in some sense. It's a name that was chosen for us, there are many who share it, and we don't necessarily relate to it. But our chosen online persona is unique & intentionally crafted.

I think (at last in part) because using a real name leads to being performative, you're trying to build some kind of reputation that connects to your personal or public life Pseudonyms, you don't have to put on a show (for better or worse... but apparently more often for the better)

One thing you see in the offline world is people bringing up their unrelated good deeds when caught misbehaving. I wonder if there's a sense that a pseudonym is judged purely on the account output, but a real name will be judged on everything you do.

I think it's that you are deliberately engaging in very specific way and the only way you can keep doing it with credibility is to not be an asshole. Like if I did that every single person I follow would block me and I'd have zero interactions. It's in my interest to not be a dick.

my guess is that with real names some people are still giant assholes while fewer wish to speak up in opposition to to them because of fear of being targeted irl, so it selects for the biggest assholes