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Error comments on Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014 - Less Wrong
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This. The face one presents to one's peers is justifiably different from the face one presents to amoral, potentially dangerous organizations. Probably the first thing that, say, a job interviewer will do with a potential candidate is Google their name. Unless the interviewer is exceptionally open minded, it is critical to your livelihood that they not find the Harry Potter erotica you wrote when you were fifteen.
I have both a handle and a legal name. The handle is as much "me" as the legal one (more so, in some ways). I don't hesitate to give out my real name to people I know online, but I won't give my handle out to any organizational representative. I fear the bureaucracy more than random Internet kooks. It's not about evading the NSA; it's about keeping personal and professional life safely separated.
It's like when I lock my doors, a skilled thief would get inside anyway. But it's good to protect myself against the 99% of unskilled thieves (people who could become thieves when given a tempting opportunity). Similarly, it would be good to be protected against random people who merely type my name into google, look at the first three pages of results, open the first five linked articles, and that's it.
It's already rather late for me, but this is probably an advice I will give my children.
Technically, I could start using a new identity for controversial things today, and use my real name only for professional topics. But I am already almost 40. Even if after 10 years most of stuff written using my real name would get away from google top search results, it probably wouldn't make a big difference. And seems to me that these days link rot is slower than it used to be. Also, I wouldn't know what to do with my old unprofessional blog articles: deleting them would be painful; moving them to the new identity would expose me; keeping them defeats the purpose. -- I wish I could send this message back in time to my teenage self. Who would probably choose a completely stupid nickname.