Seriously, I have no idea why people care so much about it. It's completely unimportant, as
@steve and
@Mark C have said. We never used to have it. It's not a status symbol. It's caused far more discussion than I ever expected it to, and I frequently regret every introducing it!
Honestly, the main reason I put this in place is for the benefit of visitors, to show that we aren't just a random group of basement-dwelling internet trolls talking nonsense, but many of the key people here have actually met in person and this stuff is actually real. I think having a load of little "real person" tags on a reasonable proportion of people just gives the site as a whole more credibility. That's all. It really doesn't matter in the slightest whether you personally have that tag or not.
Of course, if something's worth doing it's worth doing well, so:
Which is why the staff have a complete record of who validated who, so in the event that someone turns out to be fake, everyone they validated can immediately lose that status. And if we ever find anyone who was validated somehow but is not on that list, I can just remove them. Don't worry, I'm ahead of you, thought of this at the beginning!
But it still doesn't matter.