@kirstyyarr

I rarely, if ever, use my real name on line.

But it is mostly for privacy and safety reasons.

Half of my family are Trumpers and a good portion of those are Young-Earth-Creationists (YEC).

If they ever found out that I tend to skew left, not exactly straight, and love studying things like evolution, astronomy, high-energy physics (i.e. things that blow their YEC stuff out of the water) it would cause a lot of drama in my personal life that I don't need right now.

@kirstyyarr

I would also argue that in certain places online anonymity can be a life or death situation.

Like holy shit, there are still places in the world where you can be legally MURDERED for being LGBT or not believing in the "right" version of the "right" religion.

I mean, my earlier post was just me not wanting to get bitched at by people in my family, but other people need to worry about being murdered by their family, community, or government over that stuff.

@kirstyyarr

And I live in a part of the US where workers can be fired for any reason at any time, so-called "right to work" state.

So yeah my Boss could fire me if he didn't like something I posted.

This is a very real concern that many people in the US have.

You can be fired for any reason. There was even a court case recently where a politician fired a staff member for liking their opponent's page on Facebook and rather or not that was protected free speech.