Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidence: research

Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by scotty79 on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @12:28PM (#24200702)

Few people in my family use their first and second name in different contexts (family/friends/work). Reasons probably vary. For my mum it just started that way when she was a kid. Family used her second name and when she started working people knew her by her first name.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by kube-system on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @12:41PM (#24200883)

Some people don't use any part of their legal names at all with their friends and family.

I used to have some extended family who all went by nicknames unrelated to their legal names. It was a cultural thing.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by copperx on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @05:52AM (#24208748)

That partly explains a perplexing issue I have with my students.

For example, let's say a student named Fred Smith emails me, but then signs his name as "Alex Harrison." And his self-selected email address is [email protected]. I'm not sure if it's a trend or a culture thing to use multiple names and last names, but it gets a bit confusing at times.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by ironic_ali on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @07:38AM (#24209346)

Same here. Its fairly common in the north east of England and parts of Scotland to be known by your nickname.

Both my sons have a couple of nicknames each, which come out depending on the situation. They're 3 & 6 now and are both called wee man by way of greeting. The youngest is now getting called Mac because his nickname is MacMonkey McBean. Names evolve over time.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by simplicio on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @02:17PM (#24202171)

I ended up doing this, more or less for the same reason. I've found it kind of useful though, as I'm terrible at remembering names and faces, so if someone calls out to me the name they use gives me a clue where I know them from.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by laurent92 on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @03:48PM (#24203460)

It’s a bit like in gmail, where you can add a + and it allows you to spot spam mail. So, if someone calls you John+firstjob, you know where they’ve known you.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by jabirali on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @06:44PM (#24205227)

I'm curious, does this still work? Since GMail is likely the largest email provider in the world, I would have expected spammers to simply filter out the `+.*` by now.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by culturestate on Tuesday August 18, 2020 @09:13PM (#24206182)

What advantage would spammers get from trying to hide the provenance of a bought/rented/stolen list? If it was a really profitable scam like crypto phishing, having the modifiers might even be an advantage because they could target the templates more effectively.

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Re:Having an alter ego can reduce anxiety, benefit confidenc... by jabirali on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @10:42AM (#24210862)

Well, if the ones who sell email addresses to spammers filter out the `+`, there’s a larger chance they can continue to do so without getting caught or exposed?

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