There is a general disconnect between the people I know from blogging and the people I know in real life. I've only met a couple of my fellow SciBlings (ScienceBlogs siblings): John Lynch, Mad Mike, and Carl. I have only once had a real world friend or colleague overtly mention to me in real life that they read or know of my blog. That's probably to be expected given that I blog pseudo-pseudonymously (quite an appropriate title given my study species).
But there are people in the bloggy world who have figured out who I am in the real world. I don't mind, I just ask that they not broadcast it all over the internets because that would clog up the tubes. The tubes don't want to be clogged. There are also a couple of real world people who have found the blog. This post got some attention at one meeting because the paper it deals with was a hot topic of conversation. One graduate student I know from another university has even gone so far as to leave comments. Who knows how many others know about my internet presence.
At a meeting earlier this year, a post-doc came thisclose to saying, "You're the dude who writes that crappy blog, evolgen." We were talking about speciation or human evolution when he said to me, "Like you said, humans and chimps didn't speciate." I hadn't said that during our conversation. I had written it here, on my blog. So, what I'm wondering is if very few people know about the blog, and they've commented or alluded to it conversation? Or if a bunch of people know about it, but they haven't said jack?
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betcha the latter.
I agree. It's pretty easy to discover who bloggers are (unless they are super, super secret like Orac). I think it is just common courtesy that if a blogger wants to remain anonymous, you shouldn't go blabbing.
Maybe it's like when someone is walking around with his fly open, and everyone is either too embarrassed or too polite to say, "dude, you're fly's open."
The weirdest moment I had was when a National Academy of Sciences member asked if I was Mike the Mad Biologist (he likes the blog).
By the way, you are telling everyone that I am TEH HOT! , aren't you...
Funny thing is that I don't think anyone in my field cares who I actually am.
My favorite recent story is being at a blogger meet-up and having a guy try to introduce me to someone, then catch himself, saying, "Uh, I don't know your real name but I do know that you're 'Abel Pharmboy'."
What, Abel Pharmboy isn't your real name?
So after coming across your blog, I asked fellow lab mates during lab meeting if they had seen your blog. Most mentioned they had come across it at one point or another. However, no one knew who you were (besides RPM). After about 2 minutes and a quick google search we identified you.
Cheers from a fellow pseudoobscurist. I look forward to seeing the results from your current work.