How many people can (could) search and find your full name the way you have it masked now? I think you would have been safe even back then. The reason the name rule is the way it is, is because there are legit reasons for being anonymous. Otherwise, it wouldn't be allowed and all real names would be mandatory. It would be easier to manage that way, that is for sure.

It was cleaner when we were kids, w/o cyberbullying and w/o the overprotective overreactions. I feel sorry for the kids today who are bullied; they get lots of well-meaning clucking from the powers that be but they aren't given the leeway to learn to take care of their own situations. I was bullied terribly in Jr. High and the school did nothing, as was the norm, except make me sit down with the worst of the abusers and share my feelings. Which made things so much worse since teenage boys don't really have feelings except angry, hungry and horny. My father lost all patience with the p***y wimps at the school. He told me I had to handle my own troubles and took me to a karate studio. He and the instructor told me to lay low for a while, learn to fight, and then beat the hell out of the first bully who tried me. I applied myself fanatically to the training and the next kid at school who started to get physically abusive with me never knew what hit him. Knocked his ass down and nearly out in the school yard. The bullying stopped dead in its tracks. I then went after another of the bullies from my old school who showed up at a party; when he started up I publicly forced him to choose to leave the party rather than fight me. Again, no repercussions from adults in either situation: we handled our own s**t. Today, I would get suspended for defending myself, which is a shame. IMO that is why some kids just snap when they are bullied and go to extremes like armed mayhem or suicide; they must feel like they have no other means of taking control over their lives, and that must be so enraging. I mean, to tell an abused kid (and bullying is abuse, no doubts there) that if he defends himself against an abuser he will be dealt with as a co-equal offender, that would have made things so much harder for me. I still would have hit that kid, but I'd have paid a price for it that would have been entirely unfair; I had a future that would have been damaged by a suspension but that dimwit is probably offering to put cheese on the burger for the next customer. Don't need college for that...

I understand what you are saying, but back then the situation was so intense I couldn't risk it - you would have had to of lived it. As far as the way my name is masked now, I realize the silliness, it's just that I'm still a little gun shy from that whole situation. I know it's hardly Googleproof.