I may do it if the username is spelled with emojis (color is really noticable when everything around it is plain text) or has a stupid take.

There’s always a difference in how men and women are treated. It’s not always a horrible evil sexist thing, but people pick up on cues from tone and username and react to that.

Being online is nice, because the default assumption is that you’re a man, so unless you have a super femme username or are talking about something femme-coded like gardening or knitting, people tend not to treat you like a woman. “Treating you like a woman” basically means being dismissive of your experience or knowledge or tone policing (if I make a rude joke under a femme username, people downvote the hell out of it unless it’s about a very safe target- that’s how minor the difference is, to be clear). I’m also probably an egg, so my perception of not being treated like a woman as nice might be skewed.