How attached are you to your username?

Thelsim@sh.itjust.works to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 74 points –

Do you have a single username you feel attached to?
Or do you like to use different names for different occasions?

Edit two and a half days later:
Thank you all for answering my question! It was so interesting and fun to read all of your responses.
I really appreciate you for taking the time to write.

97

I'd rather not have a recognizable persona online

This name is just the fewest a's i was allowed to register with

The "Take On Me" strategy of choosing a name I see.

I have been this user name for seventeen years. I'm ADHD and forget friend on platforms. This makes it easy to find me.

Not anymore, since it's really valuable to not have fixed identity on the net.

I just use my username to express myself until people who don't like me ban me and then choose another to continue being myself.

Pretty attached. My parents picked it.

If I could just be "Bill" everywhere I would but it really only works on the fediverse.

Not at all. These days I just use random words when I sign up for new services.

I used to have a 'consistent' online identity, but at some point I decided I didn't want others to be able to make connections between them.

Yeah, one of the advantages of password managers that's not often mentioned. Aside from your password, it can remember what username, e-mail address, phone number, fake name or whatever else you used during signup.

I have a couple of usernames that I have used - or, more often, used variations of - for quite some time over a range of sites. However, it is not so much that I am attached to them as such. It is more that I can't be arsed to come up with something new each time.

I like it

Ok, so your username made me curious and I decided to look up who or what this Porygon is (I'm not into Pokemon at all).
And I got to this little bit of info about the first episode that featured this Pokemon:

This episode caused more than 600 children in Japan to be transferred to hospitals by ambulance because of seizure-like symptoms they reported, due to a flashing strobe effect present at several points of the episode, and was therefore banned and never aired again anywhere in the world.

That's interesting! I don't know where I'm going with this, I just wanted to share :)

As for my username, the pokemon Porygon was never shown in another episode of the show. This is in spite of the Pokemon not being the actual source of the flashing lights. That was Pikachu. #JusticeForPorygon

Thanks for explaining! That's sounds really unfair yes.
You keep fighting that good fight! :)

I used to be attached to my username, it was unique enough to be used everywhere. I used it in the mindset of creating an online presence, so my friends recognize me in other games and such, but then slowly realized it makes you very DOXable and vulnerable in general.

Nowadays I use one username per hobby, except gaming. I want you to be able to find other stuff I created in that specific space, but I don't want you to find out everything about me.

EDIT: Also, my username was too unique, if you googled it, you would get hundreds of results, and almost all of them were me... Random accounts on sites, forum posts, etc.

Seems like you and I had a similar mindset when we made our Lemmy accounts

Teenage me used the same or a similar username everywhere, but avoided ever mentioning his full real name.

Adult me realizes that this is stupid. Either I want people to recognize me from one place to the next, then I use my real name because why would I not want people from real life to find me too? Or I want to be anonymous, then I use a username no one from anywhere else will recognize, like I do here.

My username has pretty much become a nickname even with IRL friends at this point, I don't think it would have settled as solidly if I kept switching it tbh. I am not too worried about doxxing but that is definitely a concern if you're using a single username everywhere.

I've grown very attached to my username and see it as part of myself. I like to be recognized by my name, and try to keep it unique. Partly because it's a part of me that I don't get to express often in daily life.
However, I do keep my personas strictly separated from each other. I have one for professional use to ask questions that can be too easily identified with who I am offline, several for throwaway names and this one for social interactions. I don't care too much about the others, but do like to see myself as Thelsim as much as my other self.

Yeah pretty attached. It's just a thing I like using as a synonym for myself

Enough to have been using it for 15~20 years. I only use it in a few sites though, where I feel like I want some sort of "identity" - otherwise I'll pick something random.

I drop usernames without a second thought if it suits me. I use different ones I think up on the fly most of the time. The only one that matters to me is one attached to my development activities in the FOSS community, and I might share opinions using it but primarily I use it to engage in discussion related to development so that people who know me in those circles know who they're talking to.

I learned to enjoy multiple usernames. It's just more fun. Cyclohexane is cool also!

Not attached much. I misspelt this username for Yahoo Chat almost 2 decades ago and stuck with it.

Very much so! There’s this other person who uses the same name online and whenever I sign up for a new service there’s a chance he’s been there first and I have to resort to an alternative. In my head we have a friendly feud about this but I’m not sure he’s noticed yet

And just like others mentioned, it’s very much become synonymous with my own identity, friends refer to me with it and at times I identify more with the nick than my actual name

:) No trap. Just curious to see how people deal with online identities. Feel free to not answer anything or to be as vague as you want.
The last thing I want is to intrude on anyone's privacy.

I flat out refuse to have alt accounts because of it.

I’m pretty attached to my username, sometimes people call me by it and I even have some nicknames originating from it. I use it in only four places, but I definitely feel it has become my default username as of recently.

I used to have specific usernames I felt attached to, but those depended on what kind of phase I found myself in. Nowadays it's hard for me to come up with a username at all, especially since I don't want to use my real name. But so far I like this username I have now the most.

Been using this online handle for 30 years now, I'd say pretty attached!

My username is different on (almost) every website. The amount of websites I'm on (especially considering I hold the world record for website registrations) would make it pointless to reuse any.

This name was made for lemmy. I have different names on different platforms because users from one place should not me able to find me anywhere else.

I have a gaming name I use on multiple places however.

I try to vary usernames on high anonymous community. While on some other communities, I go by the same which is more or less attached to my real life persona.

It's part of my identity. At one point I flipped it, and now a whole load of people in real life call me Liz.

I've been using it since I was 8 or something so pretty attached.

I usually cycle through usernames on Reddit every 2-3 years, and while I'm a bit attached to the username, I absolutely do not use the same name across different social media, nor do I post anything from one to the other. Compartmentalizing helps limit the possibility of doxxing.

I use the same name for most things out of habit, but I wouldn't be too put out if it is taken when signing up for something new.

I'm fairly attached. Been using it for years. It's a rough translation of Sindarin.

for a long time i have used moskito10, but i decided on my current one a few years ago.

Not very. I usually make a different username per website, but they are usually a portmanteau of various characters I like. So several names I use are fairly similar.

@thelsim

Some people call me by my username ("reiver") when they meet me in person.

To me, it is as much my name as my given-names are.

...

When I consider signing up for a new platform β€” if my preferred username isn't available, I often won't join.

...

Which never used to be a problem β€” as it is an obscure English word using its archaic spelling β€”

But, there are a lot more people on the Internet now, than there were two or more decades ago. So sometimes it gets taken by someone else.

That's so cool, like your name.
Should change the last part to "Reremouseman" though, to stick with the theme :)

Very. This IS my online name. Although it started out as a way to be anonymous online, by now it is darn easy to connect with my real identity.

And its more unique than my real name. Theres enough Tom AndrΓ© 's out there on the web that any variation of it as username is usually taken, but emptyother (or empty_other) is always free. I prefer it over my real name, when online. Easier to recognize in chats.

Also its a overly literal translation of my name from my language to English. Tom = Empty, Andre = Others.

Other than a few places, i use this username everywhere

I used to have a single username that I used everywhere. But the last couple of years I started using a few different ones.

I think OneWomanCreamTeam is my favorite username, but I have so many accounts in other places under different names it's hard to feel too attached to it.

Quite attached to this one for now, but have gone by others in the past. probably quite easy to find me IRL, oh well...

Just did a quick look, I've been using a version of this on and off for 20 years

Nope. I have some that I used as a kid, and sometimes I reuse them when I can't think of a new one for some throwaway service.

The idea of having an alternate online persona doesn't appeal to me at all, nor does the idea of being well known or recognized in general. I don't go out of my way to remain untraceable or anything cool like that, but switching up usernames every once in a while is easy to do.

This name goes back to the early text-based multiplayer adventure games of the late 80s, when our area of the Internet was still called ARPAnet. It was originally (Felix) Hausdorff, the founder of Topology. But, Hausdorff is a lot more typing than Haus.

That's so interesting! It really has a lot of history behind it then.
I tried to look up Hausdorff and Topology, but the wikipedia page for Hausdorff Space made my head hurt :)

This username is different than my other usernames I use. Hard to name this username here but I like it.

I do take care in finding a suitable username. I have four accounts on different instances and all have different names, but mainly because i find it easier to see which account i am currently using. I like my usernames, but i'm not attached to them, nor am i attached to my accounts

I kept my randomly generated username from reddit here, because I see it as a continuation from my reddit account after reddit killed itself

Kinda. For example, here on Lemmy I accidentally didn't use my main username, but it's not worth making another account for it. I just set it as display name. Not perfect, not terrible.

I came up with my user a while ago and didn't find any better name. I would change my name if I came up with a better name

I have multiple usernames but each one exists across platforms etc. I try to keep my accounts sandboxed.