It never really bothered me before, though I suppose it should have - until a couple of years ago, I was working at a university and I would have hated either students or colleagues to find my fandom involvement. And, since I do use my real name on the archive, it wouldn't exactly be difficult. Yes, I'm not the only person with that name, and there's a famous British actress with a very similar name, but some of my early stories even have my work email address, because it's the only address I had then and I knew nothing about web mail...
In my other fandom I use a nick - the same nick as here for live-journal stuff and WMR for the archive. I don't use my real name, but some people know it, especially if they've emailed with me.
And, as I said, none of it bothered me especially - until very recently.
I'm moving into the career of employment counsellor and taking a qualification in the area. One thing I discovered recently is that employers will sometimes Google prospective employees to check out their online activities. So things like myspace, Live Journal and other active online stuff can be examined to see if there's anything embarrassing or that the employer disapproves of.
Think that's far-fetched, or that employers wouldn't really care about fandom activity? Well, I know someone in my other fandom, a fanfic writer, who had to
delete her LJ, her account on the fanfic archive and other evidence of her presence on the internet because she's job-hunting and all this stuff turned up in a search on her and did her damage.
So... something to think about.
Wendy
