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But why adopt a nickname at all, than? If you is you and Aiwendil too, why not choose your own name as a nick?
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In my case H-I I did not adopt a nickname. When I first found this site I only read the posts rather than looking at the names of the posters and I had so many monikers going that I needed something I could definitely remember, so choosing a shortening of my own name seemed the obvious choice.
This would then suggest that even in my original incarnation as "a pile of bones" I was myself and only myself as I had no alter ego.
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But Aiwendil is I; I am Aiwendil
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So this should, in theory, work for me. However, I have noted recently after reading this thread that I am a slightly different person online than I am in real life and I wonder if this is due to a subconscious fear that being myself will cause offense to others. This is in fact likely as my usual greeting to people takes the form of an insult and those who did not know me would probably wonder why I was greeting them so nastily.
This led me to thinking that yes the internet does allow us to create a 'mask', we can put out a form of ourselves that we think is acceptable to others and so stops them from seeing 'the real me'.
However at the same time it does allow an insight into a person that everday conversation does not give. On a site such as this you can watch a person grow over time. For example like myself. I began in the quiz thread saying very little and feeling terrified that I would say or do something to offend others - and in that respect I am different to my real life counterpart who speaks a long time before she thinks! Now I tend still not to talk much but I have migrated to the book and film discussion threads and in my mind that is indication of growth both in confidence and in myself as a person.
Screennames are not so much something to hide behind as they are a creation that allows us to develop and become them. Once this has happened I believe that the screenname and the real person are conjoined and compliment each other, making a better person out of them.