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[isometrist]

What do you do to manage your online identities?

I'm starting to consolidate my various and sundry screen-names, in order to create a consistent online identity that I can link to a central location. Basically, I'd like to start commenting on articles, participate in discussions, and hey, maybe even start my own blog someday - and I want it to always be consistently, recognizably me.

However, I understand that this could backfire horribly! If a potential employer or professional contact follows the trail around and finds some weird kinky stuff, or even an opinion they don't approve of, that could cause problems.

Facebook is under my real name, naturally. Twitter is set to private, but I'd like to have a public one (again, without having to juggle multiple accounts). "isometrist" was my first attempt at creating a "This is what professional contacts will probably see, and it's what I'll blog under someday" name, but in hindsight I'm not really fond of the name anymore. It's also a direct connection between my professional email address and the Dwarf Fortress forums, which is a little too close for comfort, hur hur.

As a well-rounded person with a variety of interests (yeah, some of them a little kinky), and not much interest in coming up with five dozen different usernames for each one and having to juggle them all, I'm looking for suggestions on how to manage this.

Also, has anyone had any online identity catastrophes, like your boss or family finding something you'd decidedly prefer they didn't find? What's the story, and what did you learn from it?

[eerr]

People make more assumptions based on other accounts named eerr (which aren't mine)

Rather than anything I've ever put up.

and I just mean some annoying girl I wanted to go away.

[Thief^]

I have a variety of different account names. Thief^ is for most game-related things (where "^" is allowed). I also have a pretty generic name that I can use on anything else. I try not to use my real name online unless it's specifically about me personally (e.g. Facebook, Linked In).

I use my own domain for email, so I can put a different alias to my email address for each of my identities, saves juggling email accounts.