For as long as I can remember, I have held one internet truth to be self-evident: Do not reveal your true identity on the internet, because the creeps will find you. This concept was drilled into my head by my parents, teachers, and everything I read or heard in the media. The way I understood it the quickest way to being abducted was to tell the strangers on the internet anything about your own life.

So I didn’t.

For the better part of nine years I roamed the internet under the guise of a number of quirky and questionably spelled usernames. I stayed out of chatrooms and always used the highest levels of privacy settings for my Facebook and Twitter accounts. The only space I was interested in occupying on the internet was a personal bubble that could be reached only by those I handpicked (preferably via real life interactions). But then something happened that I always knew would happen but still surprised me nonetheless: I grew up. No longer a pre-teen with a MySpace account, but a twenty one year old soon-to-be college graduate investigating career paths that heavily rely on establishing credibility both on and off the internet. So although I may still enjoy being a kid at heart, from here on out I’ll be working on curating content I find relavent and interesting, with the occasional treat thrown in (for example: grownup fake tattoos).

To finish out this inaugural blog post I’ll leave you with a TED talk on the importance of usernames given by a new friend, the Yelp community manager in London, Alex Shebar.

You can find out more about Alex here.