Stop Asking Me About My Usernames - 3
December 17, 2020•357 words
Listed's servers must be located in a different timezone than mine, since it's December 16th for me and the published post says December 17th. Oh well. #100days still stands.
Usernames are, strangely, one of my favorite parts of the internet. The creativity, individuality, and childlike "coolness" involved in their creation makes for a fun creation process. Seeing the results of a search term, sticking words into translation programs, finding words related to one another, adopting character patterns and styles that I see in others' usernames - it's all strangely entertaining to me.
At the end of the process, I'll often end up with usernames with personal meanings, funneled through layers of obscurity until that meaning isn't discernable to anyone but myself (and, of course, until they sound cool). I won't list any here - see my first post on this site - but suffice it to say I take pride in my usernames.
The problem is that those personal meanings are, of course, personal. If I join voice chat, I'll occasionally get offhand comments asking about my username: "what does your username mean?" "where'd your username come from?" et cetera. I am then put into a weird position - I can either (a) lie and tell them that it's meaningless, taking away from the value of my name; (b) tell them the actual meaning of the username, potentially revealing something about myself and taking away the mystery of it (one of the things that makes a name 'cool'); or (c) refuse to tell them the meaning, making the conversation awkward. None of these options are that great. I'd much rather avoid the conversation altogether.
I am largely responsible for this. I'm the one making the usernames. But also, I never inquire about other people's "green267" or "DRAGON203946843"; it feels like sort of a violation of internet customs to ask. Maybe that's just some bullshit rule that I made up myself and now abide by, but I really do believe it: usernames shouldn't require justification or explanation, just... uh, appreciation, I guess.
This has been a long-winded way to say:
Just stop asking me about my usernames. Please.