the benefits of my generic name.

There is a massive amount of text out there dedicated to the idea that the clash of millennial, gen y, what-have-you ideals (youth immersed in social media), and the exiting baby boomer and gen x (the people who do the hiring / are in control) principles.  The long and short of it is that if anyone can track down who you are, and what you've done in the past, your datashadow on the internet will haunt your career, and opportunities.

I came upon this link (via @thegirlriot on Twitter) that lists suggestions for creating the perfect Twitter profile, one of the first suggestions was using your real name.

I tend to go by some variation of brokengentleman when I sign up for services, for many reasons.  Key among them is the lack of searchability for my real name, Jon Crowley.  This is an irritating thing for 'building a personal brand' (which is so wooden a phrase that it makes me uncomfortable), but I'm thinking it could be a beneficial thing in many other ways.  If you google 'jon crowley', or 'jonathan crowley', I appear among a group of others with the same or similar names.  I don't 'own' the name Jon Crowley, not on the internet.  Choosing brokengentleman as a username often enough is my workaround for that.

And, if you have a name that is common enough, you can actually manage to disappear into the crowd, for a little bit.  I have the feeling that kind of anonymity will be getting more and more scarce, and more and more treasured.

That is to say, if you name your kid 'Bookcase',  I can guarantee that every employer WILL see the pictures of them shotgunning a beer in a less-than-classy halloween costume online.  Whether or not I think that matters, I can guarantee James Smith won't have the same problem.