Personally? meatspace threats aren't the problem for me. Which is important, because I think that in a lot of contexts, your "real name" conveys a lot of credibility. I mean, sure, _why could write a technical book and have it be accepted without a real name, but I'm not nearly that good. I also, uh, I really like bragging about the technical book in real life, so compartmentalization would remove some of the reward I get. It would probably make me a less irritating person, too, but hey, I'm talking about me here.

The part of the article that really struck home for me:

> They all have something in common. It never fails to amaze me, but a single mean email or bad review can send them into a spiral. Like, they'll still be obsessing over it days later. I think, "Wow. After all these years, they still won't let this stuff roll off of them?" And then it happens to me.

It's largely an emotional issue... but when I create, and I think when most people create, it is for largely emotional reasons, too.

Of course, it's also, uh, well, I feel kind of embarrassed for admitting that anonymous words can make me feel anything. And it's not like I want to silence thoughtful criticism, even if it's hurtful. (I think there's a line in there somewhere; part of that line is content... how well thought-out is the meanness, and part of it is repetition.)

>Suppose someone gets angry at me for what I write. He gets a bunch of friends together and they give my games bad reviews on Steam and iTunes.

>This is really mean and genuinely harmful, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. They will cost me earnings, and I have no recourse. They walked up, punched me in the nose, and strolled away, and I could do nothing.

which isn't something I've personally experienced, but is something I feel some fear of. Probably not as much as a real creator would feel, just because creating, for me, is almost entirely social; my living expenses come from elsewhere.

I mean, yes, I think that there is a place for a nom de plume, especially if you are working in two different areas with two different or conflicting generally accepted social mores, That helps, I think, mostly by setting expectations with your readers; It's not so much that your pen name is especially secret, but that it gives the reader an idea what to expect, and if they don't like the sort of thing you do under one particular name, well, there's a convenient way to avoid it. Ian Banks and Ian M Banks are a particularly not-secret example of this; choose the former if you like literary fiction, the later if you like science fiction, and it's pretty obvious that if you just enjoy the man's writing more than you care about genre, you can pick both.

More commonly, you see writers penning erotica under an assumed name, and then later, after they have made it with regular novels, their real name is revealed, like Anne Rice/ Anne Rampling

But... the point here is that if I'm creating for public consumption, and a big part of the return is the public reputation, then compartmentalizing, sure, can make the loss of one persona less catastrophic, but it's still a pretty big deal, and for a lot of people, changes the equation to the point where it doesn't make sense to have a public persona at all.