We had a fun thread last year about what came to mind when other people's usernames come up.

It ended up turning into a cool little online intro of the history of your username, if you have one. There are so many usernames I don't recognise now that I'm back with a steady internet connection after a long time away.

Mine is boring sorry - I switch usernames every 12 months or so for the illusion of control regarding anonymity. My main username used to be Iain M. Banks' Culture series related, so I do miss meeting fellow Culture fans, but this year it's just from a random number generator.

Does your username have an interesting backstory? I recently learned that @chocobean wasn't a chocolate bean, and @cfabbro wasn't a Computational Fabrication Bro, I'm sure there are plenty of others out there.

For anyone here who has chosen your own name, what was that process like?

What factors did you consider? Did you go based on meaning, aesthetics, vibes? Something else entirely? A mix of all of the above?

Was it an easy decision? A difficult one? How long did it take you to decide? I’d love to hear your story.

I’m not mulling over the decision myself or anything — I’m just curious about the process and would love to know more.

Web devs: what's up with this trend? For enterprise apps, I get it…single sign-on needs to detect what your email domain is to send you to your identity provider. For consumers, I feel like it's gotta be one of these reasons:

• Users don't know about the tab key being able to move to other fields on a page
• Mobile users don't really have a tab key, despite there being "previous/next field" arrows on the stock iOS keyboard since its inception (Android users, help me out please)
• Users tend to hit Enter after typing in their username, leading to a form submission with a blank password
• Security, maybe? In the past I have sent a link and a password in separate emails or separate communication methods entirely. Are you hashing/salting these separately for better MITM mitigation?

Did your UX team make a decision? Are my password managers forever doomed to need a "keyboard combo" value for every entry from now on?

Non-devs: do you prefer one method over the other? If so, why?

Tildes maintainers: selfishly, thanks for keeping these together :)

This is kind of silly. I've been tild'ing a lot recently and have come to recognize some other users, and am wondering how accurate my simple reactions are, or whether they're shared by anyone else.

• deimos - Moon of Mars, and also a character in either one of the early Unreal Tournament games or Quake 3 Arena. Uh, also a figure from Greek or Roman mythology or whatever 😅
• cfabbro - "C fab bro" - Identifies as a "bro", and does something involving fabrication?
• douchebag - Expects to get hated on maybe?
• akir - For some reason makes me think of Admiral Akbar from OG Star Wars.
• algernon_asimov - Has been explained. I too love Flowers for Algernon and Isaac Asmiov.
• boxer_dogs_dance - I picture three dogs on their hind legs "holding" each other's forepaws, merrily dancing in a circle. It makes me happy 😅

Sorry if I've forgotten your username! Reply and I'll tell you what yours makes me think, I'm feeling associative.

I always try this name first when signing up for accounts but it is always taken.

Listen closely, my friend, because I'm about to blow your mind wide open. You see, 'King of the Hill' isn't just some ordinary animated series. It's a diabolical government project aimed at documenting every aspect of my life! They've been watching me, tracking my every move, and mocking me through the fictional character of Hank Hill. It's all a clever ruse to hide the truth from the masses!

In every episode, they carefully weave in details from my life, the people I know, and the secrets I've uncovered. The creators are agents of the government, skillfully disguising their surveillance operation as a simple sitcom. They want the world to think it's just entertainment, but it's so much more!

Think about it! The show portrays Hank as a patriotic, average American, while I, Dale-ahem uh, Rusty Shackleford, the one who truly understands what's going on, am portrayed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. It's a calculated move to discredit me, to make the truth sound like fiction!

Every time I see the show, I feel their eyes upon me, laughing at my expense. The characters, the scenarios, they're all just tools to manipulate public perception. It's a mind-control experiment! MAKE SURE YOUR MOUNTAIN DEW IS SAFE.

But don't worry, my friend. I won't let them silence me. I'll continue to expose the truth, fighting against this government conspiracy, no matter how deep it goes. They can't hide forever!

Sha-sha-shaaaaa! pocket sand

I tried to register here the other day with my preferred username, which was taken, so I replaced an S with a 5 as I've done in the past. Now I realize that might have been a bit deceptive - someone reading my comment might think it's coming from the other user or vice-versa, and I don't want to be that guy. What's the vibe here about that? Should I invite myself under a new name once I'm approved for invitations, or keep this username? I'd just DM the other user if that was an option on tildes.

edit: Thanks, all! I'll keep it until/unless the other user feels strongly about it.

Hi all, loving the site so far - big ‘old forums’ vibes here which is amazing!

I was telling a friend about tildes last night and I said ‘yeah this tildeee’s……tildas, til-dess?? Place is cool!’

I’m guessing it’s Till-dsss? Cheers 🫡

edit: Nice - came up from a coffee and morning chores and 5 posts, great to be here. No automatic auto-mod in sight. :P

Further questions:

• If you go by both, do you ever mix them or do you keep them totally separate?
• Do you let your real life friends, family and peers know about your online pseudonyms?
• For people building an online presence as a kind of brand, how does this impact your choice?

lou's post here resonated with me and my attempts to get my family to use better security practices (i.e. 2FA, password managers). They're very difficult to wrap your brain around to the average user, and they have the ability to create catastrophic failstates if used incorrectly. Furthermore, even when they work well, they can still be kind of clunky (different sites use different methods; writing down/printing recovery codes feels like a dated solution alongside other tech-forward things).

Also, outside of this, password requirements are their own bugbear, with nearly every site having different criteria. Even as someone who uses a password generator and manager on the regular, I still have to adjust the password creation criteria to do things like fit character limits or specific requirements (and don't get me started on forced resets!). I totally get why so many people reuse passwords, or have a default one that they sort of modify as needed to fit a given site's needs.

From my (admittedly super limited) perspective of a lay user: usernames, passwords, 2FA and the whole stack seems like something that's suffering under the technical debt of decades' worth of web development and networking. It seems like things have inched forward and many new layers have been added to address emergent problems, but the whole system gives a sort of barely-held-together-by-tape feel.

What if we could use what we know now and redesign things from the ground up? If we could start fresh, today, what might username authentication look like beyond the usual username/password combos that we're so used to?

I'm interested in any ideas -- not necessarily just feasible ones.

Also, despite me being the one prompting this thread, don't feel the need to simplify technical explanations or anything. I'm mostly interested in lurking and seeing what all you very smart techy people have to say about the topic. :)