Anyone who’s had any kind of interaction with any kind of online community and wanted to take your relationship with the people you know to the “next level” will have dealt with the situation above at some point or another in their life. You’re sure you recognise someone from their avatar, but you’re not quite sure if you should go over and say hello to them or not, even though you might have been exchanging filthy penis anecdotes online for the last two years. (Filthy anecdotes about penises. Not anecdotes about filthy—oh, you know.)

Then, once you finally do summon up the courage to walk over and say hello to this person that you might have thought you were quite close to until you were faced with the terror of spending time in physical proximity to them, you are faced with a very difficult question, and one which has baffled philosophers throughout the years.

“Who am I?”

There’s a moment of silence when time seems to freeze. It occurs right after you say the words “Hello, I’m” and is a moment that seems to last forever. You have an important decision to make at this point—a decision which will determine your conversational partner’s immediate reaction to you.

That decision is whether to introduce yourself as your username or your actual name. For people whose usernames are their real names, this isn’t an issue (though it does often prompt the overly-formal seeming “introduction using both first and last names, occasionally including middle initials” situation rather than the more casual “Hey. I’m Pete.”) but for those of us who picked ridiculous usernames and are now stuck with them, known better as our self-appointed, perfectly-justifiable-to-ourselves-but-harder-to-explain-to-others monikers than our actual names? It’s a difficult decision to make.

“Hello, I’m Pete,” assumes that your conversational partner has paid attention to your profile (assuming you put your real name on it, which some people don’t) and carries the risk of them looking at you blankly and going “Who?” while walking up to someone and cheerfully announcing that “I’m angryjedi!” could simply prompt a look of bewilderment, a cry of “No, I’m angryjedi!” to start echoing around the room or someone laughing in your face.

In my experience, it’s often best to do both. “Hello, I’m Pete—@angryjedi from Twitter.” This is usually followed by a “Well, you don’t look very angry to me!” (obviously they haven’t read this blog enough) which we all have a good titter about and then move on to actual proper grown-up conversation. Or possibly shouting “COCK!” at each other, depending on the appropriateness of doing so in the context.

Last night, I attended an event at which a number of people I knew from Twitter, including several other One A Day Project bloggers, were in attendance. It was probably the smoothest this particular exchange has ever gone, with the possible exception of PAX East last year, an environment that positively embraces nerdism and encourages you to cry “I am xXSanguine-Warrior69Xx!” from the rooftops.

I was actually surprised at myself. Confronted with a room full of those that I see as SUPA IMPOARTANNT PEEPLE FOR MUCH RESTECP (including Ian Livingstone, Jon Hare, Richard Wilson of TIGA, Andy Payne of UKIE, a whole mess of MPs and a variety of journo types) I was expecting to freeze up and/or drink myself into oblivion with the graciously-provided free refreshments. It was not to be, though. I schmoozed with the best of them, got some great interviews (the iPhone is fantastic as a portable recorder, if you’ve never tried it, incidentally) and had a brilliant time.

I came out of the whole thing thinking “Yeah. This is something I want to do.” Which is nice.

Now to get on that.