Identifying oneself as a communist makes you an enemy of the exact same people as identifying as a "tankie." Admittedly, I tell people IRL that I'm a socialist, I don't use either of the other terms IRL because neither are really relevant to anything I'm doing (and I don't think there's a great reason for others to use the term "tankie" in particular IRL) and they don't really communicate anything meaningful about my beliefs beyond what the word "socialist" conveys. But the idea that there's seriously a super different connotation between the terms is laughable.

That's like saying that identifying as a Trotskyist is not a good idea now that the online discourse has turned away from Trotskyism. No one who matters hates you because of what side of early 20th century communist debates you land on! They hate you because you have left wing politics, and in that sense we're all the same.