Thread:Skyzy/@comment-26164766-20160418010705/@comment-26247132-20160418020052

My day job is in the tech field so I'm pretty cautious about the personal information I put online, including anything that shows up on a driver's license (like gender, age, etc...). I keep multiple profiles for various things, separating work from personal from social from etc... so my online worlds rarely cross streams. It also makes it easy for me to get up and walk away from a profile I created a year ago vs. a profile I've been cultivating since I was nine, for example.

From an online discussion angle, I actually find it quite useful. Instead of using your own perspective and background, you have to look externally for reasons to support your point of view (and you might often change your own viewpoint when you look at things from a different perspective). You also end up researching the topic(s) more and for me, I love research because I love learning.

Another thing I do is I try approach discussions from a third person narrative perspective, staying away from "I" or "You" statements unless pertinent to the specific discussion (like this comment for example). It helps remove the one-on-one personal nature that causes a lot of needless arguments and bickering and opens it up into a generalized and more theoretical discussion. This in turn also helps keep you from taking things on a personal level when it's not in response to a personal story or not directly applicable to you. (Most of the personal insults people have thrown at me on here are not factually correct about me so it's like insulting someone with brown eyes by saying their eyes are an ugly blue. It basically turns them into a boggart.)

Other than that, I've never use my real name online for anything except shipping to a PO Box and I google myself once a month to make sure nothing appears for me in the results.