Isn't this profile question getting a bit dated?

June 11, 2004 11:53 AM

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it. [more inside]
posted by brownpau to Feature Requests at 11:53 AM (42 comments total)

Isn't this profile question getting a bit dated? Perhaps we could take a cue from Blogger and throw in some multiple random user-submitted profile questions? Consider this a pony for the far future, when things have settled down.
posted by brownpau at 11:54 AM on June 11, 2004

.
posted by scarabic at 3:25 PM on June 11, 2004

Hey, I still like that question!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:29 PM on June 11, 2004

It doesn't seem dated to me.
posted by cmonkey at 3:43 PM on June 11, 2004

I'm with you good buddy
posted by mss at 3:49 PM on June 11, 2004

Oh c'mon, it's all "ooh - nicknames - they're all new and a bit strange, aren't they? It's not your real name at all! You had to make it up and everything. Wow, what a crazy place the internet is, eh? What's it all about?"

More dated than quonsar's mom in highschool.
posted by Blue Stone at 5:00 PM on June 11, 2004

handles are lame.
posted by keswick at 5:10 PM on June 11, 2004

Jesus, next you're going to want to change the #006699!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:16 PM on June 11, 2004

Handles are cool They worked for CB radio, and that never went out of style, right?

Ok, so what if it just said "your bio:" ?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:09 PM on June 11, 2004

You don't have to answer the question you were asked, alors. I started with an explanation that jfuller doesn't require much explanation, then later posted an elaborate mefi wishlist (still waiting for the lunar-orbit-capable Learjet and the date with Sailor Mars), and ended (for the now, anyway) with the very Zen

jfuller has posted 26 links and 1315 comments to MetaFilter
and 4 threads and 103 comments to MetaTalk

posted by jfuller at 6:19 PM on June 11, 2004

How about "Why did you pick such a stupid username?"
posted by timeistight at 6:39 PM on June 11, 2004

I was a 60's love child.

My parents named me Vanilla Ice, but I changed it in order to find work.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:01 PM on June 11, 2004

I don't think it needs to be changed.
posted by crunchland at 7:52 PM on June 11, 2004

My nickname has a funny story behind it, really!

(sigh)

Hot damn, I'm a bad liar.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:58 PM on June 11, 2004

"Why did you pick such a stupid username?"

I was so excited about getting in that I grabbed the first thing I could think of, which is the handle from my email address that I used for my blog (a phrase boiled down from a book title). In that giddy rush, I completely failed to foresee how years worth of comments that I might or might not want to be taken seriously would be followed by the phrase...
posted by soyjoy at 8:36 PM on June 11, 2004

How about, "Once upon a time, there was _________"
posted by amberglow at 8:43 PM on June 11, 2004

Oddly enough, in my more than two decades of being online (and I don't mean just BBSs), this is only the second time that I've used a nickname. I've always been identifiably myself, using either my name, or my usual UNIX abbreviation (kmellis); and this as a point of online social responsibility.

It's been quite educational for me to have this concealing nickname. I certainly do, at least in my own mind, have a "persona" on MeFi that I've not had elsewhere. I am also notably more thick-skinned here than elsewhere, and I suspect that's no accident.

Nevertheless, I'm not completely comfortable with it. I'm not comfortable with concealing personas unless it is both justified and explicit in the context.

Anyway, for a web site that's only a few years old, I find the idea of saying that the nick question is anachronistic (and implicitly that it wasn't five years ago) to be somewhat odd. You kids.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:45 PM on June 11, 2004

I like that question too. I only just got around to answering it, if you go and change it I'll have wasted all that effort.
E B, I make no effort to conceal my real identity, privacy on the web is a myth, anyway. But having a nickname is fun.
posted by Grod at 9:18 PM on June 11, 2004

Yah, my nick doesn't really conceal because my user page and link to my website tells all. Still, though, there does seem to be a difference in my psychology of having my posts appear with "Ethereal Bligh" as opposed to "Keith M Ellis", which is what appears pretty much everywhere else (inlcuding some high-profile joints, though I'm not as active as I once was).
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:32 PM on June 11, 2004

mine says it all
ba-ba- ba-baby
posted by clavdivs at 9:50 PM on June 11, 2004

You must conform, brownpau. You VILL conform. VHERE ARE ZHE PAPERS?
posted by arto at 10:21 PM on June 11, 2004

EB: I went underground once I started working directly with the membership of a large community-driven commercial website. With thousands and thousands of frequently disgruntled people looking for anyone to pin their site complaints on, I had little choice. Witness comment #5 here.
posted by scarabic at 10:48 PM on June 11, 2004

And by "undergound," I don't mean that I adopted a handle. I mean I strove to erase all traceable links between the one identity and the other. After about 3 years of blogging, 2.5 years on MeFi, and 4+ years of membership on the site in question, it wasn't all that easy. Any group of 19 determined individuals could still probably penetrate my cloak of invisibility.
posted by scarabic at 10:50 PM on June 11, 2004

I still get e-mails trying to guess the origin of mine due to the prize on offer on my user page. Migs, riffola, dhartung...all the greats have guessed but none has come close.

Just remembered that I forgot to reply to dhartung...oops!
posted by i_cola at 5:41 AM on June 12, 2004

"wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?"

When my parents got an email address. I cut back from 12 hours a day to less than 1 hour almost immediately. My guitar and synth techniques improved greatly.
posted by mischief at 8:35 AM on June 12, 2004

I partially use my full name to force responsibility on myself. I'm an aggressive, confrontational person, with strong beliefs, strong views of right and wrong, and a sarcastic way of expressing it.

It's a fine line from using that for the good and becoming a troll, so I force myself to use my full name so as to force myself to take responsibility for if, and when, I go to far.

In other words? It's a deliberate check on myself.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 10:36 AM on June 12, 2004

mine sounds like it was lifted from a message board for whiny teenage girls who "no one understands".

Gosh, I am lame.
posted by wannabehippie at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2004

Very well, I humbly withdraw my feature request. You freaks.
posted by brownpau at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2004

I find when I actually start thinking of myself as Orange Swan, it scares me into taking a time out from MeFi.
posted by orange swan at 7:34 PM on June 12, 2004

My nick is actually quonsar's real surname.
posted by Witty at 8:42 PM on June 12, 2004

My nick came from fooling around with a silly thing at the Atlanta Chess Club, on E Ponce De Leon Ave.."That's good burger..." they would say, if they had a winning game. I don't like it anymore, and I'd like to be known as "CountChocula".
posted by crunchburger at 8:57 PM on June 12, 2004

Matt: MAKE IT SO!
do it!
posted by crunchburger at 8:58 PM on June 12, 2004

um, mine IS my old CB handle.
posted by quonsar at 9:31 PM on June 12, 2004

quonsar is your new CB handle, good buddy.
posted by crunchburger at 10:10 PM on June 12, 2004

We got us a convoy!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:30 PM on June 12, 2004

Three long-hair friends of meepzorp
In a chartreuse minibus
posted by crunchburger at 10:53 PM on June 12, 2004

microbus
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:29 AM on June 13, 2004

Count Me Out were a straight edge hardcore punk band from Richmond, Virginia who release 2 great albums on Indecision Records. Their first album, 110 was generic, Chain of Strength-sounding, although flawlessly recorded. Their followup album, Permanent, saw the band developing a more original and somewhat melancholy approach to song-writing. Those 10 songs have been the soundtrack to my life over the past 2 years. They've been the inspiration to put effort into hardcore, given me pause for quiet reflection, covered the pains of growing up, falling apart, picking up the pieces. As time goes on I find myself reading more and more into the record as some people do with other records. It's the one record I can put on no matter how I feel and I can find something in it that makes me feel good and that life's problems can be overcome. I like the record it makes me want to do something with my life.
posted by xpermanentx at 7:08 AM on June 13, 2004

Actually, mine is kinda like a tattoo you regret a few years later...where you think "Oh my, that's not good, is it?"...but you're stuck with the decision none the less.

(If only laser surgery worked for usernames.)
posted by dejah420 at 6:54 PM on June 13, 2004

Dejah420, it may not be a great name, but it's certainly nothing to have much regret about. I don't get the "420" part, but I've always thought that "Dejah" suits you for some—je ne sais quoi—reason.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:26 PM on June 13, 2004

EB, it's an Edgar Rice Burroughs reference
posted by matteo at 5:00 AM on June 14, 2004

Ah. Thanks.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:27 AM on June 14, 2004