the way it used to be done on the internet was all aliases. people of like minds and humor would be attracted to each other, purely through interaction. and often those interactions were more genuine because of a lack fear. it was easier to spot the psychos, the thoughtful, and the cleverly funny. i’m some cases, you’d get along so well, you’d meet in person.

then for legal reasons, to appease government requests, and to build ad tracking databases, large centralized tech started asking for legal identity. now, because it has been normalized, people actually associate some sort of integrity with legal identity…which was not originally the case, but was used as part of the big tech sales pitch early on, using the whole “for your safety” argument which many people fell for.

There are almost no benefits to tying your online identity to your legal identity.