RE: Usenames! Why do users choose Pseudonyms?
In your mind, what makes a person's username less representative of themselves than their actual name?
I would note that a person chooses their own username, making it therefore directly representative of them in some way, whereas our actual names — for most of us at least — are something we were born with and did not choose.
I do understand the point of view that a person's "real name" has a more tangible connection to their real self, but I don't necessarily agree. It's also not difficult to create a social media account with a fake name that seems like a real name just to fool people. I don't think that the type of name a person uses represents any useful information about their trustworthiness, or even their identity.
I go by my gamer handle on here (i.e. my Steam ID is the same as my Steem ID), but on other sites like Wattpad I go by my real name. Neither name is any less "me."
Fair point but I don't think passports, driving licenses, ownership of property, registering with a doctor or school etc would work so well without a consitent identity. On a spiritual level, maybe our birth name does reflect who we really are and not who we dream we want to be. I voted you up anyway because you make some great points
I think the future of a digitized identity and is to have every individual registered to a unique cryptographic key that represents their "true identity." Under that sort of system, you have universality of record keeping that is linguistically neutral, but also no need to tie your identity to a "name" that isn't of your own choosing. What you "call yourself" and what your legal identity is do not need to be the same thing, just as when people call their friends by a nickname, they aren't referring to some other different person just because it's not the same as their "real name."
EDIT: Interesting discussion. Thanks for raising the question!