Everything described in this history could have happened just as easily if he'd posted everything under the name "Raver Tomato".<p>Aliases give you the <i>option</i> of more easily disassociating things from your legal identity, as well as making it harder for people to find all the embarassing shit you posted when you were a teenager.
Niche activities or are always the best friend catchers. As it automatically filters out anyone not interested.<p>Anyone who does chat would immediately have a common interest.<p>Because it's niche, there tends to be original or unique ideas, making connection easier.<p>That being said, you can't hide your identity and sing it loud and proud to any and everyone. My blog is anonymous so there's no friend catcher effect.
<i>"Another way of doing it is by sharing polarising, unconventional ideas you have. These ideas will repulse those that are close minded towards your ideas and attract more people like you."</i><p>This is absolutely true, regardless of the medium - but the internet allows you to do this at scale. If you have an unconventional idea, it makes sense to try to seek out the few like minded people with whom you can discuss. However, in today's world I would be very cautious of encouraging anyone of building their own echo chamber. It's one thing to go against the grain and seek out like mindedness; it's another to live in an echo chamber.
I don't think I've ever met someone online and later met them in person. Except for dating sites.<p>It seems more difficult to make friends the older I get. I think at least part of it is that everyone is so busy.
I don't know, I think your dad's advide is pretty spot on? Just that it isn't mutually exclusive with the fact that IF you want to be recognized by the content you put up, you'll have to associate your name with it.<p>I started surfing the web in the early 00's when I was like 3 or 4 yo so it sticked to me the whole nickname thing way before asking for First Name and Last Name, cell phone, ID number, street address was the norm (depending on the service ofc)
Great read. Friends is the best way to achieve just about anything.<p>One day I hope to be able to meet a friend from Moscow. Even if Russia shares a border with my home country Norway, it is impossible for us to meet in person at the moment. The russian fellow took over my open source project when I had lost interest in it.
More on friendcatchers here: <a href="https://www.swyx.io/friendcatchers" rel="nofollow">https://www.swyx.io/friendcatchers</a>
I've been in multiple communities under a fake name. Every birthdate I entered online is always 01-01-1970. I don't think you were being rebellious, you were the complete opposite!<p>I've met people IRL from Finland, Lebanon, South Africa, basically all over the world, who I met online. Sometimes I would introduce my real name only when we met IRL.<p>Not using my real name has not held me back from meeting new people, online or IRL.
And from the other side, I've had good success reaching out to people in response to something posted on the web. An email only takes 5 minutes, and it can lead to a life-changing new friend, project and business.
I really want to believe in this, but from personal experience it hasn't worked out. I used to spend a lot of time posting frequently on LinkedIn, nothing came out of it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, maybe there's survivor bias in the success stories, who knows.
Some people here seem to be talking about them as in making actual friends, but it's more in the sense of a friendly party (e.g. followers who have gratitude due to something you've provided for free) rather than the kind of traditional friendship experience we actually have one on one conversations with.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apatio11%20friend-catcher&src=typed_query" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apatio11%20friend-catcher...</a><p>just worth noting.
Met my previous co-founder and now one of my best friends through the Machine Learning reddit talking about Using Embeddings for medical Diagnosis codes ~2017. So I can attest to "putting yourself out there".
I've been online forever as MikeWarot or KA9DGX, depending on username requirements. It has served me well for finding stuff I found interesting in the past. Now that I've met another Mike Warot, who live(d?) in London, via the web, that might not be quite as useful as it was in the past.
Can can attest to this, a small random alt hip-hop forum in the early 2000's changed my life because of the people I met on there.<p>Met some people from the forum, started making music, going out to clubs etc. 20 years later not only has my life been shaped by those encounters so have many other people who know me!
'The beginners guides to everything have already been written' -- strong disagree... there's always space to write for somebody who is getting into something for the first time. Any beginner's guide is someone's advanced topic, and vice-versa.