This is an interesting approach to take. I have taken the opposite approach by using my real name in almost all cases, and my name in unique enough that a google search will directly lead to me.

The benefit of using my real name is how what I say ties into other people that know me through other channels. Someone might read a post I made about a multiprocessor Arduino design, and recognize my name as it related to Subaru stuff. These connections, in the real world, are the primary benefit of social media in the first place.

There is a downside.. if I had something negative to say I have to give it some consideration given the easy linking. I'm not sure that is always a bad thing, but it isn't always a good thing either.

It's a delicate balance of not tieing inflammatory statements to your true persona, yet also profiting off of any fame that may arise from your public presence.

For the vast majority of people erring on the side of anonymity is the right choice. You can only go in the other direction once.

Pseudonyms are ridiculously hard for normal people to keep up and protect sufficiently, even against normal (aka not State) level actors.

The more you write, the more data there is. With enough patterns and idioms - everything from word choice to punctuation to posting times - they can be used to correlate and potentially identify a user.

And realistically, since this isn't a court of law (where there are previously concrete rules in play), they don't need "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even "preponderance of the evidence" but something as simple as "don't these things look the same!?" to fire up a mob to start a campaign to get someone fired or suspended.

At that point, the target has to hope they can either a) prove it's not them or b) the leadership has integrity to hold them to reasonable standards. It's ugly.

That's explicitly against the TOS for most social media platforms, and some (like Facebook) are really cracking down on pseudonym accounts over the last few years.

When I was younger, the internet was a tool for discovery and creativity. We used creative names. Today, it is an extension of personality.

When my daughter started using the internet, my advice was "be a superhero". Don't use your real name, and don't show your face publicly.

I taught her to use a password manager so that she would have a different username for each site, and got here a primary gmail account that was easy to say, but not related to her real name.

Anonymity is an asset.

When I'm dealing with people I actually know - which is nearly all of my social media use - I prefer to use my actual name just as I do when we interact outside of social media. Using as fake name with these people would be bizarre and confusing.

Even if I were to use a pseudonym, I would not pretend it afforded me any guarantee of anonymity anyway.

While I'm clearly not using my real name here, I'm also not hiding it generally. I'd be hard pressed to advocate for hiding as well. I wouldn't say anything with a pseudonym that I wouldn't say with my real name. inb4 "not everyone has that luxury!" Yes, I understand that already. Everyone has to evaluate their own risks, and decide for themselves; thanks... But that's the point I'm attempting explain. If you wont sign your name to it, why are you willing to say it at all? Where's the line between what you believe, and what you're willing to accept responsibility for believing?

Second rule of social media: never use the same pseudonym twice.