Why did you choose your username?

󠁀@󠁀FUCKER@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 538 points –
401

I'm using my real name because I was here to virally promote a movie, just like all the other celebrities on reddit before.

It was a very successful promotion.

What? Are you supposing you are actually Margot Robbie

People don’t just make things up on the internet. I’m kinda stoked to be responding to a comment on a Margot Robbie comment.

Of course I am, why else did you think I spent 2 months here discussing the importantance of sincerity in an increasingly commercialized and absurd hyperconsumerist world, as well as the need for jaded adults to reject cynicism and regain their humanity?

I didn't mention the name of the movie here so it's not a promo, so, still not against strike rules.

Great work Margot Robbie! I chose my name because people think I'm a little odd.

1 more...
1 more...

To play off my instance name.

I like not being easily identifiable on social media. When I was a kid my parents taught me to not reveal my real name on the internet and nowadays it seems that your real life and internet life should be the same.

1 more...

It's been my nickname for over 50 years.

Am impressed.

It's even more impressive given that they're only 35.

Can't a man lie in peace these days. Back in my day lies spread like wildfire in a cornfield during a heavy wind. This why we can't have nice things anymore. Everyone is snooping on everyone memory talk thingy and reading the most intimate thing they shared to another stranger at 3AM after yet another mental breakdown. Shame on you. Shame.

One of my nicknames growing up was Lil Miss Potatoes. But now I'm a grown up, so I'm Lady Taters.

1 more...

I kept on trying to make an account and it wouldn't let me for some reason.

I didn't. It's my IRL nickname. It means 'short circuit' (as in 'easily frustrated'). I'm the opposite of it, I'm the calmest person on this planet. My friends thought it would be funny. (the full word spells 'Kurzschluss')

It’s the name of my favorite Star Ship! USS Defiant

Having just finished DS9, holy shit what a good show. And it made watching S3 of Picard better with all the bg info!

Old WoW randomly generated name. Stuck with it for years now

I just run pwgen -c 6 -0 and picket one that I liked most.

I did same thing when I was picking my Wifi home network name (Wahthahv)

1 more...

Have you seen kiwis? They're adorable!

The bird is alright too I guess

Well I'm a very confused person, and I'm surprised at the world around me.

I like coffee and I like vectors. I made it in high school and thought I'd be one of those names I regret, but even now I still like it.

Remembering multiple names is too hard. I'll just stick with the one mom gave me

Step 1: Download https://www.eff.org/files/2016/07/18/eff_large_wordlist.txt

Step 2: run the following in the terminal

shuf -n 20 eff_large_wordlist.txt

Step 3: choose two good looking words from the output

Step 4: smoosh them together with optional underscore or capitalization

Now you have a tasty username worth sharing with friends and family!

Coming up with your own username without help from a program is more unique and fulfilling. You can actually say you came up with it. Not saying my username is anything special. It's just a reference from Odyssey 5.

My initials if my middle name were Keith

I grew up in central Flordia in the 80s and 90s. I loved saltwater fishing. Because of this I started to have lots of interactions with pelicans.

After awhile I became kind of close with them, we somehow seemed to communicate, I would spend hours with them, sometimes I would take out the boat and float around the shallows for these huge schools of pompano that would swim around the deep shipping channel then they would come up in the shallows for a few seconds and hit the bait fish really hard, it made them an easy catch and an unbelievably hard fight on ultralight gear.

I would go alone, sometimes with friends, but the one living being that always showed up was the pelican, and in this particular case it was a fishing spot I found near the Skyway bridge in St. Petersburg.

This is where the pelican became my favorite bird, we had some good times together, one bird in that area though new me and followed me around, never bothering me, never once trying to catch my bait that obviously has a hook in it, it seemed to know what was up, I'll never forget those pelicans and especially my buddy who always loved hanging out and getting fat from my catch.

So I carry the name because I love pelicans and the more people see the name maybe just maybe they might think twice before harming one of these magnificent birds or littering which is heavily contributing to their extinction.

I had a T-shirt with a toaster that had flame decals and just the word toast underneath. People kept asking me what it meant, as if there was a secret meaning to warm bread.

I chose my name as a shortened version of the name I generally use on social media platforms. It's just this one is easier to type and since the account didn't exist I took advantage of being able to use the shorthand.

I was a big weeb, and my original name was Nekomaru. As I "grew out" of it, I translated the name back into English, and realized I actually liked it better.

Here's a wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

TLDR: in our current capitalist and technologically advanced society, we increasingly live in a world where reality and fiction mix, so much so that it's hard to tell what is real or isn't real. They blend into each other. This is hyperreality. Arguably what's real doesn't even matter as much. The 'truth' generated by (social) media is often far more consequential than something as trivial as what actually happened.

For people who like movies, watch Cronenberg's Videodrome or Existenz. That's what 'reality' has become.

Just some random thing that comes on my mind at the time, i guess.

Because of Russians.

Se got lots of immigrants from Ukraine these two years. One girl started going to our summer camp/all year group (something like Scouts) and started dated my friend. He keeps "dictionary" of mispronounced words.

There is lots of good usernames but "plactagonic relationship" was best at the time (it grew a lot since).

Because it’s clear to me that in order to solve the problem of school shootings, we must arm kindergarteners with grenade launchers.

I hit randomize in a passphrase generator until it farted out a mental image that made me laugh.

Way back in the day I wanted my club penguin to be named sparky, but that name was already taken. So club penguin recommended to me sparky678348

I had a bottle of maple syrup on my desk and I'm not a very creative person.

You can work it out yourself by looking at my instance name.

Out of habit. It was my reddit username for almost a decade and the first thing that came to mind when I made a lemmy account.

Why I originally chose "justlookingfordragon" on reddit: I was looking for fellow PokΓ©mon X/Y players with dragon-type safaris willing to share their codes, but the simplest usernames like "dragon" and "safari" were already taken, and "Imjustlookingforadragontypesafarikthxbai" didn't fit the character limit. I originally didn't even plan to keep the account, so I didn't care that the username was silly and awkward.

"Wolf Link" was a nickname that came later.

Its the same username I had at the other place that shall not be named, until I got permabanned for reasons still unclear to me.

I originally joined via the swimming sub there, looking for recommendations on waterproof music players to use while swimming so I can listen to AC/DC and Motohead etc while swimming laps. I'm a bogan (Australian and New Zealand slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are considered unrefined or unsophisticated) and I swim laps every day. Therefore..... waterbogan

Because I wanted to be obscure and mysterious, but if I'd call myself MrMysterious I'd know deep inside that I'm a wanker.

I was binge watching the show "Letterkenny" One of their plotlines was about a Ostrich. Allegedly.... Im Australian, No Ostriches, only Emus.

It's the name of my youtube and twitch channels.

The name is a bit of a long story using text to speech in Sea of Thieves to annoy another crew. Tried getting to to speak in an irish accent and misspelled "charms" and the way the TTS said "chamrs" was just hilarious. So there we go.

The first time I tried karaoke, I was a bit intoxicated and worried that, having a common name, another Nick would get confused. My parents worked by full name incorrectly, so, I figured that that would be a great way to differentiate it, not realizing at the time that the name "Nick" itself normally has a "k" in it, making "Nick w/ a K" arguably more confusing. After sobering up, I found the whole concept wonderfully silly and decided to switch to it as my main screen name.

I forgot my password to bitwarden so now I just completely transitioned into a nihilist. Display name is different from username, but basically the same theme.

To paraphrase a longer explanation, I’m a Nintendo fan, I like Mario games, I love the Bowser fights. I wanted some alliteration on that and Bashing came to mind. Played with that and ended with BowserBasher

I write an anticapitalist tech blog at theluddite.org

This is great:

We know what happens when the open internet balkanizes into small walled gardens made by big tech companies because we're living through the early stages of it now. They compete for your attention. They try to squeeze every single moment of human life out of you. They will actively encourage bad faith actors to weaponize the web in order to drive engagement and maximize profits. They will do this at the expense of human rights, global health, and civil society. Their engagement maximizing algorithms will contribute ethnic cleansings.

You might find Suler's Psychology of Cyberspace interesting as well as this concept of "Profilicity" developed by Moeller and D'Ambrosio.

1 more...
1 more...

There's a character on Adventure Time named AbracaDaniel and I just switched in my name.

A real life nickname I've had since I was 7. I've just stuck with it for the past 26 years. It actually originated from the Beanie Baby Lizzy. And Izzy is just Lizzy the Lizard without Legs. 🐍

The name i wanted to use for my email was already taken so i had to come up with something.

Because my tiny little arms have been replaced with laser-cannons.

I lived in Tropical country and iced cool water is the best

Because fewer a's were all taken

song by a band that fitted with my habit of nuking my PC every couple of weeks, either because I wanted to try a different Linux distro or because I got some kind of Limewire chlamydia

It's the back of my name stuck on the front of my name. Also hope it makes me sound like a knight of the seven kingdoms.

I realised some time back that my first name backwards made me sound like a knight. I've failed to utilise this in usernames except maybe once.

This my first nickname from when I start gaming on line : Star Craft - Broodwar.

I chose mine because one day I had nothing to do and was super bored, so I just stared at ceiling and blackedout. And mind you I wasn't tired or anything neither did I sleep, I just lost consciousness because I was bored.

I wanted to add "the magnificent" to the end of it but it didn't fit so

Well. I am a wench. And quite jaded. I wanted to make something I had not really used before, back when I joined the place that shall not be named, and it sort of stuck. I also really love the color green. If it makes you feel any better I am a much happier person today than I was then. Still a wench though. 😈

I came up with it when I created my second acc on Reddit; I didn't want to spend time thinking of a username so I just thought of the first two words that described my mood at the time and went with it. It means "melancholic potato", I like how dumb it sounds

1: Has just three letters. 2: Doesn't really mean anything. 3: I like how it sounds.

Well, I'm waiting to drop a standard line that can be deduced from my username, but I still haven't landed a good post to do so...

Also, I wanted it to be disjoint from my former Reddit usernames

4 more...

iron maiden song, a poker hand, and my name has 2 a's.

Always wanted to be a TIE Pilot...

/Empire did nothing wrong.

It’s an alteration of an older PSN name I used a while back and it has a really nice ring to it.

It's a futurama reference. Meant to be anonymous but ended up getting lucky with a lightsaber gig and am now stuck with the name lol. Only unfortunate part is I wish I'd known which account was going to get lucky lol

I'm a nerd. I'm a Natalie. I'm a nerdy Natalie.

Discord nickname that originated from OneShot (the game my icon is from). I chose it like 4 or 5 years ago and it stuck on Discord so I just adopted it to here

A catchphrase of an interestingly math-themed villain in my favorite game, The World Ends With You

Tanith was one of the goa'uld from Stargate SG-1 which I was a huge fan of as a kid. Back then I was not so good at spelling so I sounded it out and kept adding letters until I found a username that wasn't taken

That references the name of my programming language I first-learned in my entire life.

Because 10 year old me didn't know how to spell in japanese.

I left a shaker cup with some drink mix in there for weeks, totally forgot about it. Now it's a science project

I've been using some form of this name for 10 years. It's a part of me now.

I was trying to call someone an idiot, but I only had a calculator on hand. I also didn't consider talking as an option.

Real name is Mitch and am somewhat irritable, so. . .

One needs a username. So I chose one that I have used for a long time, which incidentally I couldn't use on Reddit

Well now you've just set the reddit psud on his own, deep, personal quest of petty revenge.

1 more...
1 more...

I made a club penguin account when I was younger and this is the username I use ever since.

I couldn't come up with shit so I put a random word through a cipher and switched a few letters around

I used the same moronic username I got from a name generator for 20 years before Reddit was trashed. I took the opportunity to reinvent myself. I'm a techie with a beard....

It's been my internet identity / haxxorz handle since the 1990s, and the story is about as benign as Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner and his black-and-yellow striped sweater.

Because it's a pejorative term for a loud-mouthed know-it-all bloviating idiot and I like to keep myself humble and try not to take myself too seriously.

TJA – A German reaction to the apocalypse, dawn of the gods, nuclear war, an alien attack or no bread in the house.

From an old clip that played on a radio station back home "Sittin' on the porch with my ol' lady, eatin' a ham-sammich"

I was really craving pancakes with maple syrup, but I was at home without pancake mix or syrup, and everything was closed because it was 3am.

Years ago, when I was around 13-14, I wanted a "cool" sounding username, since I was also sick of coming up with usernames for websites. I did some thinking, and came up with "Mr.Champion". Used it ever since.

I love thinking about the universe and I'm a guy. Not much too it. lol.

The Neve 8028 is an amazing mixing console lmao.

I'm a fan of BNA's tanuki main character Michiru, and Summer Tanuki's storyline, and how Tom Nook's name is pun with Tanuki and...

The stars just aligned for me, I swear.

I combined my dog's names (Kona and Loki) but fucked it up the first time I ever used it as a username. It was supposed to be "Kolonaki" taking the first two letters of Kona and the first two of Loki then alternating in the second half of both. KoLoNaKi. But I accidentally entered "KolAnaki" and just ran with it.

I liked it so much, I made it my fursona's name since before that name was just "Raccoon."

High Hopes is a 1994 song from Pink Floyd. It's usually taken as a username so, I switched to whatever crossed my mind at the moment that sounded similar

I used to really love William Gibson. It's the name of a fictional musical duo in one of his novels, Idoru.

TK is a journalism joke. In that field, placeholder headlines used to commonly be written in as "Headline TK" or "TKTKTK" etc. It comes from back when newspapers were typeset physically before set in lead to be sent to the printer. It is short for To Come. Many editing marks are misspelled on purpose to make them stand out from the final text. "TK" is an unusual pairing of letters, so it stands out.

I was hoping to be generic. Also, to add to articles and photos on lemmy, I wanted random photos from users. I don't even care what they are. So far I've seen a beautiful landscape.

I sometimes say things that may not be 100% correct. I’m only human.

"All the things that used to be inside of me, now they're outside... But the inside of me is empty."

My preferred username was already taken a long time ago. This was meant to be a temporary replacement, but now this is my preferred username.

Akuma is a boss. Been my favorite all through my childhood.

Cool hobby from my past ….. plus for whatever reason lemmy didn’t like my generated username and I gave up

Don't have the best internet and my favorite video game franchise is Metal Gear.

I love Dorohedoro, and Aikawa happens to be one of the manga's kindest and least prone to violence characters, despite being very capable in the domain. The turned k comes from my thoughts flitting from the character's nature to the Portuguese velar (to watch, conceal, vigil), and finally to back-released velar clicks...

Nakari has "existed" since I was a teenager. Started off as a character I used in writing as an outlet, but slowly the name also became a handle for me. Hell, I guess an entire "presence" since it's my go-to for most sites.

Lexfortaine came around because I wanted something vaguely "proper" sounded in a D&D game, and I never actually got around to giving the character Nakari a "canon" last name. It worked well enough for an asspull, and has just been tracked on ever since. Grown to like it, actually. Feels more like a proper name.