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I wrote to one of my few IRL friends and asked if I could put him down as a recommender in my application to get admitted to grad school. He said, "That sounds like a great lineup of courses and I think you could definitely contribute to the wikis and others. I'm less comfortable being a recommender since I mostly know you from long ago. You write well but your writing speaks best to that."
Yeah, but they're not asking for a writing sample (since anyone can just plagiarize one of those); they want a living and breathing human being to vouch for me. But most of the people I've talked to over the past couple years have been anonymous online friends who wouldn't want to provide their name, daytime phone number, title, and agency/institute and, if applicable, department affiliation, for fear of getting doxxed as an incel or other hateful individual.
This is one of the downsides of hanging out on these forums -- we invest in people (1) whom we could get separated from if, say, we get banned or they get banned from the services we use to connect with each other; and (2) who are not able or willing to share their IRL identity because they're worried someone will doxx them and destroy their whole life.
Yeah, but they're not asking for a writing sample (since anyone can just plagiarize one of those); they want a living and breathing human being to vouch for me. But most of the people I've talked to over the past couple years have been anonymous online friends who wouldn't want to provide their name, daytime phone number, title, and agency/institute and, if applicable, department affiliation, for fear of getting doxxed as an incel or other hateful individual.
This is one of the downsides of hanging out on these forums -- we invest in people (1) whom we could get separated from if, say, we get banned or they get banned from the services we use to connect with each other; and (2) who are not able or willing to share their IRL identity because they're worried someone will doxx them and destroy their whole life.