Introductory rant

It all started with @GINAbot, a nice Discord bot that I use for notifications. It could have started differently because recently other tools have added notifications, including busy.org (where I prefer to blog because of the centralized storage of drafts) and steemworld.org by @steemchiller, which has a cool user interface.

Anyway, @Ginabot let me know that @dragosroua mentioned me in a post. I have great respect for Dragos so I went to check : he had nominated me for the #steemitnamechallenge !

I found this challenge highly relevant to my vision for Steem: the vision of a mini-society, of a socio-economic medium, as I detail in a recent post, "Steemit and the Fractal Society".

Science shows that predictable behaviour and cooperative behaviour are the cement of society. If other people are to trust you, they need to be able to predict, with a certain accuracy, how you'll behave under certain circumstances. The only way they can do that is by looking at your past reactions and behaviours. Thus they need a "mental mapping" where the key is, for instance, your name (or your face) and the values associated with this key are all your past behaviours that the other guys know about.

Thus hiding your real name and your face increases your personal freedom (you can do what you want and not be held to account) but in exchange ... inhibits the creation of social bonds.

_source

Aren't you bored to death yet?

If you aren't, here we go:

Tell us in a post how you chose the current Steemit username you have. The story behind it.

By now you should be able to guess: my Steemit user name is my real name.

I chose it deliberately. Behind this choice is an implicit pledge I am taking toward the whole community:

• I pledge to behave responsibly and not act in a way that I might later be ashamed of in real life
• I am not afraid to stand by my opinions; they might be wrong but were offered in good faith.

Also, when anyone reads my opinions, they are free to go out on the Internet and try to find out more about me, understand my background and the context in which I formed the opinions I express, my experiences, my biases, my limitations.

An important question is: isn't that a risk, using my real name ? Yes it is, clearly. I am taking a risk, I am choosing to be vulnerable. This is the very definition of trust, that most basic ingredient of society:

“… the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of another (Rousseau et al., 1998).”

I trust your good intentions, I trust that you don't want to harm me, just as I don't want to harm you, I trust that you will not abuse my trust.

_source

Tell us your real name!

Duh! Unlike "Dragos Roua", my real name is not uncommon in Romania. About 10 years ago I discovered on LinkedIn that there is another guy with the same name, doing IT like me. No relation. Meanwhile he even ended up working for the same organization at the opposite end of the continent from Romania! How bizarre is that!? That contributed to my decision to also use my mugshot despite not being "the looker". Someone here on Steemit even told me in a reply that I should change my profile picture (I am too ugly). I am considering replacing my face with a picture of the ugly duckling.

If you could change your current username, which name would you choose and why? If you have a possible usernames list, mention it!

If I was a bit circumspect about steemit, feared it was a scam maybe, I would have used another username, something chosen at random, at the inspiration of a moment.

Nominate 5 people for this challenge

@lishu
@kyriacos
@smooth
@roelandp
@gtg

In Conclusion

Read my posts and comment, engage, let's live through the slogan

"Come for the rewards, Stay for the community!"