Posted By:
Al CrisafulliI lurked here for a long time before I began posting. Knowing the board's policy toward anonymity and controversial threads, and knowing that this board has a healthy dose of controversial threads, I registered using my full name. It's the only public board on which I use my real name.
Within a few months of my first post, a couple of people who know me outside the hobby began asking me questions about things I'd posted here. Apparently some of my posts showed up in Google searches.
This really, REALLY bothers me. My personal life is my own, and I share it with the people I choose to. For some reason, when people talk to me about parts of my life I haven't shared with them personally, I find it very invasive. Maybe taking offense to this makes me hypersensitive, but I don't care - I am who I am. Want to find about about what I do in business? Fine. Want to find out what I do with my free time? None of your business, unless I make it your business.
It's not that I'm anyone special or important, and it's not that I'm paranoid about anything, it's just that I like to keep all the different parts of my life where they belong, and I don't like the idea that just by using the internet, my life becomes an open book.
Anyway, if I could go back and do it again, I would be involved in the online part of the hobby using some sort of "handle" that was unrelated to my life.
-Al