Title: I am active and known in a certain small industry in my home country (&quot;developing world&quot; kinda place) after 15+ years of online presence.<p>Over the past years I&#x27;ve been feeling constrained and unhappy with that identity. I also felt very alien in my home country and culture, both afk and online. Even my mother tongue and given name are not something I like. They all associate with the world I don&#x27;t enjoy nor support.<p>While I&#x27;m obviously not a native English speaker, I feel more &quot;at home&quot; while communicating in and consuming English and living in the Western society.<p>I moved to a western country, but online I was still &quot;there&quot;. Now I want to ditch my established identity and start afresh, under a new name. Distance myself from the culture I grew up in.<p>Of course, I could do all that without changing my name, but I feel like the old world would leak and haunt me.<p>Recently I came across the &quot;ex Muslim&quot; subreddit, and felt a weird familiarity. My troubles are nothing compared to those who grew up in a religious world and found the courage to leave and be vocal about it. But I could relate in a way. They feel like &quot;the old life&quot; is constantly trying to leak in and poke them.<p>It worries me, and I thought maybe we could discuss this type of cyber-rebirth, its caveats. Maybe someone has relevant experience and wouldn&#x27;t mind sharing.<p>- How do you make sure the old identity doesn&#x27;t leak into the new one? (apart from obvious technical non-contamination policy)<p>- Feels like starting from scratch in 2018 is harder than it was 15 years ago. Maybe it&#x27;s the other way around. I guess I&#x27;m getting cold feet.<p>- I want to write and create, but I&#x27;m worried that being this weird person who magically appeared on the internet just a few months ago would make people wary. Google my new name: the guy never existed before 2018. Where the hell was he?<p>- Will changing full legal name (first and last) bring lots of problems for years to come?<p>- Am I being silly?
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