Most people are terrible at OPSEC. If your online persona is used long enough and garners enough attention your real identity will almost certainly become known (extreme example: Ross Ubricht).
This is compounded by the fact that people tend to say things they wouldn't otherwise say if they knew they weren't anonymous.
The other issue is it's harder to capitalize on the reputation of online personas in the real world, if you care about that sort of thing.
If you don't care about reputation online or offline then just generating new identities on a regular basis could work well.
He initially used his real name for a StackExchange account, which was later linked to DPR and SR.
But you're right about downsides. If you want online personas and real world identity to be unlinked, you can't capitalize in ways that link them. But you can still capitalize in parallel. In the real world, I have no interest in privacy etc. Here, I don't draw on my real world reputation. It is sad, though, that I don't get to meet online friends, attend meetings, etc. So it goes.
> The other issue is it's harder to capitalize on the reputation of online personas in the real world, if you care about that sort of thing.
That's the trade-off, and it's why I don't sympathize too much with people who go online to get publicity, then complain about the negative attention that comes along with it.
This is compounded by the fact that people tend to say things they wouldn't otherwise say if they knew they weren't anonymous.
The other issue is it's harder to capitalize on the reputation of online personas in the real world, if you care about that sort of thing.
If you don't care about reputation online or offline then just generating new identities on a regular basis could work well.