Beautiful Sunday morning, still no snow here (😒 mother nature) and I realized that I am... Googleable. Like, my name is now out there because of publications. Like, I have been protecting my identity for a long time now, so it's very annoying that I finally have been exposed.

Anyways, how do y'all deal with online fame and recognition?

I'm almost nonexistent out there in the wild.

You can find my LinkedIn but that's about it 😅

@C0D4 True, that one for me also has been around for a while. Just under a short version of the name so nothing legally traceable.

I carefully decide what platforms I want to stay anonymous on, and what ones I want to stay public on. (I also regularly Google myself to make sure nothing leaks out.) Anything public goes to an aliased email so I can filter it easily.

That can change of course - I recently decided my Stackoverflow profile was worth making public, whereas before it was anonymous.

Those public platforms like LinkedIn and Stackoverflow are then where people inevitably end up if they find my publications - and that usually just results in recruiter spam, which I ignore, due to it going to said aliased email address. Occasionally there's interesting stuff though, so worth checking once in a while.

Facebook is a bit of an anomaly - uses my real details but it's strictly private. Plus I barely use it.

Beats me. If someone wants to get to me - they will find a way. I just try to avoid splashing my name here and there.

Some of the ranters found me quite easily :)

Yeah, the "public" part in "publications" is even more surprising than Xmas every year. ^^

I solve that by deciding what I want to be revealed via real name googling so that especially potential employers will find what I want them to see, like valuable side projects.

How I deal with name search ?

During new character creation I picked family with common name.

Interesting to see the other side. Trying to get googleable isn't that easy either.^^

@nitwhiz I've already had virtual fame in one platform. It's easy, really. You just have to keep committed to an appealing narrative and not be a dick. But I'm legit not a fan of fame. Don't want recognition, don't want cookies, don't want to be seen. I'd much rather be invisible, tbh. But I like money and smart robots. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

P.S. the said fame started and finished during my teenage years. I was not made for it, and the disassociation of some people with my message and their obsession with superficialities did bother me a lot so I bailed.

@theKarlisK "how to get a robot to fuck your enemies in the ass in the most painful ways"
Or "optimization of pain injected by a robot fucking your enemies in the ass".

@theKarlisK covid, man. People here do wear skimasks instead of other masks.

I kinda stopped bothering. There's a big difference between privacy and anonymity, and I care about the former while I don't about the latter. So in practice I share what I do with the audience it's shared to carefully (or at least I try to). I don't care that my name is on it if it's somewhat professional or defensible. Granted mistakes do happen... And sometimes deletions aren't possible. If nobody cares, it will be forgotten at some point I guess. Just because something is stored forever doesn't mean that people will be looking at it.

@Condor you've never been stalked, I gather.
I'd argue privacy is best through anonymity.
But then, if I want that juicy PhD offer, I need to make a name. Still wishing it was different tho.

I was pretty well known in SF a few years ago before I purposefully pulled myself out of the public view.

It mostly consists of people coming up to you at conventions and either 1) telling you their (usually not great) ideas or 2) critiquing your code, in person.

I had a rather unfortunate interaction with a former CEO of one of those javascript package managers (because there are so many) he was rather unpleasant to me on our first meet, right off the bat, about one of the modules I maintain (I didn't even write the thing).

From there it was two years of doing conventions and working for a rather well known OSS company and it's all not really that glamorous.

Not sure what more to say beyond that. The privacy aspect (or lack thereof) isn't fun - I didn't like that I was /required/ to have face pictures on websites and social media pages and stuff.