When I used web forums, I used my full, real name, as I think most people did at that time. I had nothing to hide, after all. I never wrote on a forum something I wouldn’t have been willing to shout from the rooftops. I guess if you were posting on a forum dedicated to a subject that might attract a level of disapprobation – non-mainstream gender issues, perhaps – you’d probably have been more reticent. Still, identifiability seemed to have been the rule, rather than the exception. At that time, I found it hard to take anybody seriously who didn’t use what appeared to be a real name. Some forums even insisted on it.

IRC terminal chat client

A tiny, secure finger daemon for single-user UNIX systems.

A website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”. This website list examples of “now pages”.