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It's an interesting side effect of our need to have constant identifiers on everyone that legal name/gender changes are so complicated. It's certainly not the o

It's an interesting side effect of our need to have constant identifiers on everyone that legal name/gender changes are so complicated. It's certainly not the only reason, or even the biggest. But it does seem like our society is particularly hostile to people changing anything that can be used as a primary identifier. You mention contact linking being a possible cause of advertisers figuring out your new address, but it also wouldn't surprise me if at some point during the legal process credit industries just got notified about it. Although if that was the case you'd think that advertisers would have had the courtesy to use your correct name when sending junk mail, so... shrug. It's a weird system that is so ridiculously good at tracking people, but still messes up so many basic details.

Nasrudith 6y ago
The hostility would likely predate modern government tracking systems and bueracracies. While going from Jimmy Brown to Jim Brown wouldn't raise much of an eyebrow (head of your household now - fair enough) but going by a different name in every town would raise suspicion of being a spy, serial con artist, fugitive, or other sort of scoundrel. Bypassing "means of trust" like word about you gets viewed with suspicion even without rationalization of rules imposed by might maked right. Name changes seem to not have been frowned upon generally if they had significance. Often they were recorded as part of a rise of status whether formally like say becoming pope or a Norse deed name style like being known as Shieldbreaker because you struck the blow that split a foe's shield in two. As for tracking - many buggy but functional systems linger at good enough for generations with a weirdly stable whole. Even if you can get a "NULL" vanity plate you shouldn't unless you like taking the chance of receiving every ticket for cars without plates and having to dig your way out of that mess.

Nasrudith 6y ago

The hostility would likely predate modern government tracking systems and bueracracies. While going from Jimmy Brown to Jim Brown wouldn't raise much of an eyebrow (head of your household now - fair enough) but going by a different name in every town would raise suspicion of being a spy, serial con artist, fugitive, or other sort of scoundrel. Bypassing "means of trust" like word about you gets viewed with suspicion even without rationalization of rules imposed by might maked right. Name changes seem to not have been frowned upon generally if they had significance. Often they were recorded as part of a rise of status whether formally like say becoming pope or a Norse deed name style like being known as Shieldbreaker because you struck the blow that split a foe's shield in two. As for tracking - many buggy but functional systems linger at good enough for generations with a weirdly stable whole. Even if you can get a "NULL" vanity plate you shouldn't unless you like taking the chance of receiving every ticket for cars without plates and having to dig your way out of that mess.