HERE’S THE ANSWER
Gleaned from this thread as of 8/18 2:18PM
At least I think this is the answer. Or answers.
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Because when you take the IRL identity stuff out of the process it makes communication smoother.
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Tradition. Yes, we do it this way because it’s the way we’ve been doing it for a long time. Since the birth of Facebook or whatever.
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So crazy people won’t track me down. Which seems crazy. But that’s just the kind half-acknowledged half-conscious consensual fantasy that people seem to buy into. So maybe it’s true.
I’m pretty sure the only reason any normal people aren’t anonymous online these days is Facebook tricked everyone. They made a walled garden for college students, made them sign up with the college email, and they were expected to use their real name to find each other. It was “safe” because of the walled garden of only college kids. They they ripped down the walls, and with the expectation of real names already established, it kept going… bad was/is listed in the terms of service for Facebook. Other sites tried to adopt this as well, when they could get away with it.
Real names make stuff like doxing, stalking, swatting, etc much easier. It’s really not safe, but Zuck doesn’t care about that.
Aside from that, there is also the practical issue of duplicate names being an issue. There are a lot of people named Mike Smith out there.
You must find some value in anonymity, since you didn’t use your real name as your username.
Isn’t it the opposite? Nobody would give out their real name online until Facebook came along and normalized it. Google then forced your personal Gmail email account to be your account for everything as well.
That’s what I said, or at least what I was attempting to say.