Yeah, it’s surreal. Back when the Oregon Trail Generation got their first 486 class PCs with 14.4 dialup, all the safety guides were about “never use your real name.”

The fear of some theoretical elite AOL pedophile corps and being able to age out of an embarrassing “ponygirl1987” account actually made good prep for the idea of “you have multiple identities for different contexts” and “keep personal and work stuff isolated.”