Aliases were originally created by the software developer so that TER members could post on the discussion boards while maintaining anonymity about their reviews.

See link below for other valid reasons.

It allows you to inject humor. Or ask a question you wouldn't otherwise.  Maybe it allows you to send a message to someone who gets your alias.  Many good reasons, too bad alot of alias' go to the dark side, Luke.

reasons to use an alias from time to time.

As has been stated it could be so one can be light hearted and sort of let one's hair down so to speak. Maybe bring up or respond to a subject that is not a part of the person's regular persona etc. Or as has been pointed out to creat a name closer to the working name (I joined TER about 4 months before I made the decision to start escorting as a part of looking into it and my working name is nowhere near my screen name here) Trying to get a message to someone else without telling the entire world is an other good reason (I have used all of these reasons in the past to post under an alias before the new policy that I only learned of when I returned to the boards on a regular basis recently)

I know there are some whom have abused the feature but maybe that could have been better solved by when a person joins they can choose 1 or 2 aliases and be limited to only those for as long as they are a member. Instead it was decided that only vip s can have aliases  now.

To me this is rather unfair to the person who is based in an area that does not support TER. I have been an active member of TER for about 3 yrs and outside of the 2 trips I made to CA and NYC respectively, I can count on 1 hand how many clients I have had from TER. For me (and I am sure plenty of others providers and hobbiests alike) it does not make good business sense to spend a good portion of the advertising budget on a vip membership when there is no return on it..

-- Modified on 7/26/2006 8:25:19 AM