Why did you select your username for Tildes?

My username is my initials. I was cursed.

I have had this username for over 2 decades. It's pronounced "byte smith" and is a reference to being a programmer (as a silly spin on terms like "blacksmith" or "goldsmith").

I wanted @Jason but missed out by a couple of weeks. It's still an inactive account after 5 years.

Reddit was the first place I developed a strong online presence (outside of Facebook). I created a generic user account for my initial forays there but, after a few weeks, I decided I wanted something a bit more distinctive. So I chose this name because it represents quite a few things which are, or have been, important in my life:

• Isaac Asimov is my favourite writer in any genre, but I came to him via his science fiction. Science fiction is my favourite genre.

• Asimov was, at one point, the President of the American Humanists Association, and I'm a humanist.

• I aspire to Asimov's clarity of writing, and his ability to explain things.

• 'Flowers for Algernon' is my favourite story, in any genre, of any length.

• I played the character of Algernon Moncrieff on stage. This represents my acting past.

• Oscar Wilde, who wrote 'The Importance of Being Earnest' in which Algernon Moncrieff appears, is another favourite writer of mine (and he's gay like me).

With such an appropriate username, that represents so many facets of who I am, I've come to identify with it quite strongly. Since creating it for Reddit, I've used it whenever I've branched out to other websites: I am "Algernon Asimov" pretty much everywhere I go on the internet. I've been "Algernon Asimov" now for 12 years.

P.S. At this stage, if someone on the street called out "Algernon", I would probably turn around. :)

Because 1338 is superior to 1337. Also 1337 was taken

Wouldn’t you like to know

I wanted something upbeat and positive.
There are so many people around who are buying the whole 'end times' narrative (not in the religious sense - although I guess that too, for some - but in the 'wow there's a lot of not-great stuff going on' sense) and they often choose their names accordingly.

So rather than be clever and bleak, I chose something straightforward, shiny, and cheerful.

I was hungover and eating noodles to be honest.

I first joined in either 2018 or 2019? I had just discovered the word vivarium, and fell completely in love. Just look at the list of "-iums" on the Wikipedia page!! Plus, the Latin definition "place of life" felt like something that I wanted to represent me. Tildes was the first place I ever used the name. :)

Originally, I had chosen the username "vivaria"? But, I sort of imploded a bit somewhere around 2020, after coming to conclusion that I had been using Tildes in an unhealthy way, so I asked Deimos to nuke my account. I ended up crawling back though after years of lurking logged-out, and when I rejoined I took the closest thing to my old username. (I really wish I had vivaria back? But I've been too shy to ask Deimos if some database magic is possible to let me recover the username.)

A fun benefit -- the -ia part of "vivaria" led to a lot of folks reading me as feminine and calling me Viv, which I really loved as a transfem person? So much so that I've been playing with the idea of actually taking the name Viv/Vivian/etc. as my IRL name. It's been something I've been mulling over for years now (I tried it once with a brief FWB I had a few years back, but it felt a bit strange to hear it out of their mouth!) Even though I'm not 100% sure of it yet, the fact that I'm even considering it is all thanks to Tildes and the folks I've met along the way. :)

Tildes is the first place I’ve been able to get a username I actually like and wasn’t taken by someone else. I like books, so I wanted something from a book, and one of my favourites is Good Omens. It’s also sufficiently liked by enough people that it would be a character they’d recognise, which lets people know something about me - that I like books (to come full circle), I like funny books, and maybe I’m funny myself (I’m not really but it’s nice when people think I am).

I really like tea, and it turns our there is an internationally agreed correct way to make it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103

I’ve been carrying this handle around for over 30 years, from back in the BBS days.

Once upon a time, I knew a dealer. Nothing too scandalous, just weed (as far as I was concerned at least). Now this dealer was currently living in a long term motel with his girlfriend due to being kicked out of his house by his wife. This guy did not deliver. Ever. Didn't matter how much you wanted, you had to go to him. I didn't really know the guy directly being a teenager at the time but I hung out with an older guy who was good friends with him. More context: myself and this older friend had spent the week scrounging bottles and cans and a change jug my parents had kept. The bottles and cans money ended up in his gas tank and was used up driving around. The money from the change jug, all quarters, was to be used for the weed. Now due to the empty gas tank we could not get to the dealer. My friend begged, I mean hands and knees begged for this guy to deliver for us, just this once, pinky swear. The dealer conceided and he delivered, bringing his girlfriend along for the ride. Upon arrival he showed us the goods and asked for the cash, and I promptly handed him a sandwich bag of unrolled quarters. Jaws dropped, hearts raced, and the girlfriend laughed. Laughed and laughed. Finally catching her breath she said: "You're Quarters now, that's your name now." And the rest, so they say, is history.

Seinfeld is one of my favorite TV shows and the fake names the characters come up with have always made for great online usernames in my opinion. Art Vandelay, H.E. Pennypacker, Kel Varnson. George is my favorite character on Seinfeld so I just used his fake name as my username.

I wanted something that if you googled it, would be very difficult to tie to me as a person.

I'm not good at chess, and this was the only way I was able to say it.

I used to be an MSHA-certified miner, now I'm an enjoyer of tryptamines 🤙

It was my Reddit handle, and it's one I use across the internet.

I <3 cake and I have a philosophy degree.

Had this conversation with @Algernon_Asimov recently haha. To repeat what I put there: It's from some rather esoteric ideas in cosmology and topology. Also, it's bit of a self-burn about the smallness of any one human's existence, but not in the depressing way, but kind of in the way Carl Sagan referred to the Earth as a Pale Blue Dot. I'm proud to be a cosmic mote of dust.

I wanted a short username since the fewer the characters, the less likely it is a username is available. I couldn't use single character usernames, and I don't think even two character names were allowed. "Null" was taken, I believe, so this is what I picked. Close enough to "null" and it's only three letters, so it's a tad unique in that aspect. I can't do the math, but there aren't a ton of 3 letter usernames you can make.

Because when I was 15, Raistlin Majere was the coolest man in the world.

I'm Albi. I will shenan once, and you bet I shenanigan.

You might like this early thread:

Why did you choose this username for your Tildes account?

I've had this same username for well over 40 years. I like how it sounds; it's simple and easy to remember.

streblo!

I was into the whole snowboard scene growing up, and this was a local cult classic for reasons I’m still unsure of today. The 2000s were a weird time.

I think I was choosing a tumblr username for an unrelated account, used the random name generator to get a phrase similar to @an_angry_tiger, and modified it a little when joining here.

It's different from usernames I use elsewhere, semi-recently I started using different usernames for every new site I join, unless I really want it tied to my older username. As life goes on I find it freeing to not have to worry as much about what I say or do on one site being tied together with the other ones, not that I say or do anything controversial, I barely post anywhere else anymore and live a boring life online.

Does help with letting me troll and shitpost on tiktok without fear of someone finding my other accounts though.

So that when the inevitable spelling mistake or bad autocorrection happens I don't get doxed by the grammar nazis

My usual username is "yamplum". There's no meaning behind it, it just sounds nice and is relatively easy to pronounce. One day I was having a commiseration session with my friends about the pitfalls of YAML and someone pointed out that you couldn't spell "yamplum" without "yaml"... so I fixed that. ;)

I've had the same username since I was like 8 or 9 and signed up for Neopets. It was a misspelling of faux-hawk (like a mohawk but without the sides of your head full shaved). I thought they were just really cool. It then carried on in the 20ish years since. I've come to really appreciate it though. My username is never taken on websites or games, it doesn't have numbers or symbols, and it feels like a strong definite name. If you Google fawxhox every single result is directly related to me. Also if I ever became a pro gamer or a streamer or whatever people could call me Fawxhox and it wouldn't sound weird like "LasersRFun" or "Munchk1nBlaster" or whatever (not that I have any interest in becoming either). Plus it can be easily shortened to fawx.

Dale Rusty, you giblet-head, it's already 110 in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass!

Dumpster Grackles have it all. Tenacity, beauty, vocals, rage, discarded french fries, a regular colon, a will to survive that would inspire Beyonce... what's not to love?

I thought it sounded like a nice story. And now I’m writing the story, and it is, in fact, nice.

My younger one used to say that my real name was "Dadsadangidy Doodily Bangidy BaabaBaabaa". I found that to be very funny and brings me a smile every time it was said. So yeah it's a little pointer to that core memory.

I wanted a short, cool username but did not have an idea for one. So my current username means Peter in Polish, which is my actual name in my native language.

Am music nerd, so of course it's my favorite album.

I like tea. And it's one of my favorite forms of it. Visiting Uji was amazing.

This has been my name on forums since the early aughts. It’s a Sanskrit term meaning that basically means “foremost among men” referring to people who are esteemed pillars of the community.

I saw this name on call of duty when I was like 15 (also funny enough that was 15 years ago) and I absolutely loved it. Made me laugh pretty hard. So I stole it shamelessly as my own.

I have a unique username with a simple morphing algo related to the name of a site, and also morphing password. it's secure and i never forget.

Well it is Dutch and the smoon means Simone, the tjes means girl. However I am neither Dutch nor is my name Simone nor am I a girl lol - I am Danish and my name is Sofie and I am 30 so that's pretty far from girl-territory and well into woman-territory.

I may or may not have stolen it from a Dutch singer that I really liked at the time 😅

When I come up with usernames, I usually like playing with a variation of me being human but also maybe not human.

I've had many identity crisis growing up about everything. Race, gender, nationality, sexuality, many other things. Always worrying about what and why I'm doing something. What is the purpose? Who am I? I didn't even feel human. I couldn't relate to anyone.

But then I got older and figured out many things and am more comfortable with being who I am. But, all my usernames have some variation of reminding me that I am human or I am an organic being. An animal just like the rest of nature.

I always have to remind myself that I am human, just like everyone else. Always. I am human. That's okay.

But when I made this username, I wasn't feeling too good. So the most I could muster was well, eh. I'm bipedal, just like everyone else. Probably. That's a factual statement. That's good enough for me.

This username is unique to Tildes. I don't like using the same username in different sites because I don't want to be followed. I like being anonymous. Having said that, I've revealed so much information here about myself on Tildes, anyone who knows me would figure it out immediately. This does not bode well. I don't do this on other sites. Tildes feels weirdly safe somehow even though I know it's still the internet and open for anyone to see.

I wanted a small, unremarkable username that just blended in.

My username just makes fun of a certain tweet by a certain US president.

Also I like cheeseberders

Long ago I watched Network (great film, highly recommend) and loved the rant that ends with the classic line „I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore“ so I thought madashell would be a cool username, but then I noticed my name is in there backwards, so I went for llehsadam and just use it everywhere, including Tildes.

In homage to my Sámi ancestry.

Unable to choose a username, I wrote down its quantum state, | ψ>. Unfortunately the registration process observed my username state and found it decoherent, forcing me to branch-out to my current handle, psi.

I needed a username in the mid-00s and had just watched .hack//sign and thought the cat character was pretty cute.

It was my primary username then for about 10 years (with variants) until I switched to a new one that is a made up real sounding word because I was tired of it being taken everywhere.

But I used it here again for continuity with my Reddit name and because I was early enough to get the plain version.

1 - I wanted to remind myself to focus on creating positive posts and comments, and avoiding too much social media negativity and doomscrolling.

2- 'noise' is mostly a reference to contributing stuff in a large social circle, and I was kind of thinking about all these new people joining the Fediverse. I don't think of 'noise' as negative in the context of my username, more like 'blade of grass'...being one humble person in a much larger community.

I am a big fan of the Culture series of books written by Iain M. Banks, there is a running gag in the series where the ships names include the word Gravitas.

I chose my username for a couple reasons.

1: I studied Byzantine history for my master's degree because it was a fascinating subject to me. One of the first Byzantine history texts I read put one particular emperor into a positive, if tragic, light that really stuck with me. His name was Romanos Diogenes.

This guy was fascinating because he kinda represented a turning point in history. He went into battle against the sultan Alp Arslan and had he won (which he might have, had there not been backroom politicking that saw a large contingent of his army betray him) the whole history of the Eastern Mediterranean might have been radically different and there might still be a Roman empire in the world. Afterwards he ended up being blinded by the reigning dynasty and died shortly thereafter from an infection and the way it was described in the history was very gruesome, so another reason why he stuck with me (and also the genesis of the blind bit).

2. A kind of reminder to myself. This guy was at one point on top of the world and really fell to the bottom quickly thereafter. Kind of a reminder to be humble and not take things for granted. But also the blind bit symbolizes a bit for me that I really don't know it all and don't see everything clearly so I should keep that in mind when I try to communicate to folks or understand other points of view.

Online discourse is fraught and tense enough without automatically assuming the worst of people so I think having a username that pushes me to keep my own limits in perspective is good.

I just think it's neat.

i like word play (particularly spoonerisms) and i like interesting and subtly pervasive mathematical phenomenon.

Well, I like eating apples. And my full name has "apple" in it. I've always had a kinda dark sense of humor, so I enjoy joking about being a cannibal whenever I eat an apple.

I chose mine because I love the Cradle series by Will Wight and had just finished reading the final book

I guess I just love the robin hood movie.

I've been "the reticent" since my AOL days, my web log I started in 1999-2000, so I just hung with it.

Mine was inspired by Hello From The Magic Tavern. There's a wizard that goes by many names (won't type his full name out, look up Usidor), and one of his secret names is Biscuit Meniscus. Figured I'd try just Biscuit first, and here we are!

Boring answer: I just decided to reuse my Reddit username. I have handles that I use elsewhere that I prefer but, ultimately, I chose for more anonymity.

Like /u/Algernon_Asimov, I borrowed from science fiction. But it originated in an undeservedly obscure book by Joan Slonczewski, A Door Into Ocean.

One of the important rituals of the book's Sharer culture is taking on a self-name. And the self-name you choose is generally taken in reference to a character flaw or bad habit. When you've gained enough maturity and self-awareness, your peers will acknowledge you've outgrown your originally chosen self-name. The main character (who eventually accomplishes this feat publicly) is Usha the Impatient.

I have no expectations that I'll ever outgrow this one, though.

By far my favourite cartoon character of all time. I’m a simple man.

I used the same one I did on Reddit ^^; maybe I should have created a new identity haha

I created it when I lived with my ex best friend, and I helped her pick out a bird, which ended up being a Maroon bellied green cheek conure. She (the bird) was a cheeky thing, and I just... Wanted to honour her I guess! Over the years I've just grown fond of it and stuck to it.

I use other monikers online in other places, but this is my "forum" type one that just stuck.

I miss that bird <3

I rarely go with the same name twice. This one I like because it's very easy to type on my keyboard.

I've only ever gone by 2 handles.

The first is Arcane, which is usually taken. So that spurns ArcKane which generally isn't and allows for me to fill in my full name as Arc Kane. This came around because I wanted something a bit more unique when I was a young teenager, and it was just about the time I was getting in to wearing a black hat and entering the world of piracy and 5cr1p7 k1dd13 fun. At the time I was listening to a band called Therapy? and the album of choice was Infernal Love. The song was "A Moment of Clarity" and the lyric that stood out and I didn't understand until I broke out the dictionary was "Coquettish and arcane, but I need it all the same." Cue new username handle.

After a while I was chatting with others like me on BackBurnerforums.com (now long longlooonnnggg gone) where we used to do fun stuff like long form chat, post warez, and exploits, patches for PS1 games and do console modding. I was speaking to a person that wore both hats. He said I should have two handles, one for black and one for white. That's when I moved to a grey area and come up with something more 1337 speak and became g33kphr33k which has slowly become geekphreek (Geek Freak).

And there we go, a history of my user handle/name.

Childhood experience with a couple of amazingly fun and energetic and bouncy boxer dogs.

This is my roller derby name! It's a huge hobby for me so I enjoy bringing the name with me.

It rhymed with something else that I've already forgotten, but I have the feeling it could've been Bungus Dingus. I have a remarkably simple sense of humour sometimes.

This is a surname I invented from whole cloth, for a fantasy character in chat-based roleplay. It's my name everywhere, so it's my name here. I've been using it in one form or another for thirty years now, dating back to the Red Dragon Inn rooms on AOL. So yeah, it's kind of grown on me.

I have a dog! That, and it was originally a book title for a WIP that sort of never went anywhere. I still want to work on it one of these days.

I think I had a muffin in front of me when I was signing up.. so..

Well, like you and most, I have a reason for why I chose my name. I believe that language is the fulcrum we use to catapult us into elevated thought, and equally important, our understanding of language is simultaneously static and relative and I enjoy playing with that idea.

I've always liked plants, but outside of helping my grandparents with their gardening when I still lived at home, I never really had plants of my own. When I moved out, I was able to start my own garden and even had limited success with indoor vegetable plants, but succulents were my first foray into proper houseplants. With its pointy leaves and the nice contrast between red and green, Echeveria agavoides ended up becoming one of my favourite plants.

Also, on Reddit my usernames (I had multiple accounts because I tended to account-hop every year or two) were always completely irrelevant to my regular usernames, and I decided to continue doing that here too, although I don't think I'll feel the need to regularly nuke accounts here.

I was reading the fuck out of the deadly class books by Rick Remender.

It’s a song by Sunset Rubdown that I really like! I also just think it sounds cool lol.

I like his music.

Actually I have a couple accounts, just to test random stuff. I don’t really use this username anywhere else. Didn’t really mean to make my first post on this account in particular, but I did, so now I keep using it.

Made this name back when I was about 12 and obsessed with Meta Knight from Kirby, and Moss is just my last name. Originally, I was thinking of coming up with something new for Tildes, but it just reminded me so much of what I loved about the internet back then, so I figured I'd keep the name just as it was.

It's been my username for everything for some time now, so picking it for Tildes was an extension of that.

Also someone already took Hydra. Unlike some in this thread, they actually use their account so I'm fine with it!

Hello fellow Rustyfarian.

Mine was much simpler.

I'm old. I support Manchester United. I like technology.

And I kind of like the rhythm of a 3-word user name.

I'll dig out the AI picture of my username later.

This has been my username on so many platforms at this point. I remember the first time I used this name was when I was creating a World of Warcraft account in 2007. I had been listening to Nihility by Decapitated and was rifling through band names I thought sounded cool. I was playing a undead warrior and it made sense to me at the time.

I've never felt very creative with usernames, so I just keep using this username as a sort of digital trail of my life throughout the internet.

I have insomnia (so I'm always Sleepy), my IRL name means ewe (hence Sheepy), and rhyming is cute!

Man, if my life were like King Of The Hill, I'd do everything I could to change that. I cannot imagine a life so drab, boring and without laughter.

I chose my user name because you have to have a name online, and so I chose my own. I've been mr-death for decades, no sense denying that now.

Just the name of a card on my first MTG deck I thought looked sick.

I like Rush, I like astronomy, and I wanted a different handle from the one I used on reddit. I'd been using that same handle for like 20 years anyway, it was long past time to find a new one

I was hungry and honestly I think I'm gonna go buy some right now.

Literally my actual name

When curious, I gobble up information. It can be problematic.
Om nom nom nom.

I hate trying to think up clever user names.

I've fallen back on different iterations of the same concept on a couple other accounts. Also, not a deadmaus reference, it's just a coincidence.

I ran my real name into a Lord of the Rings Sindarin name generator back in high school and have stuck with it since then.

I'll give you one guess...

I was playing a lot of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom when I signed up, specifically the Gerudo section, and their word for “Good day” was stuck in my head

tech10 is a shortened version of "LeoTech10", i use tech10 in most places since it's shorter and it's way easier to pronounce

Debleb has been my username almost everywhere for as long as I remember. I don't even know what it means or how I came up with it, but it's cute and fun to say, and normally available everywhere.

I'm in a constant state of stress and always feel like I'm teetering at the edge of sanity. So I'm e(x)tremely (stres)sed and on the (edg)e. I just wanted something different than my usual username.

Though I'd probably prefer my usual username these days, but alas, no username change service lol

For the early several years of my being online, I was able to use the username of "mxu" most places...But it seems in the last decade - maybe even the last 2 decades - it seems to often be taken by someone else (or maybe I'm often late to arrive at new website parties?). So, nowadays I just go by "mxuribe" which is my first initial, a fake middle initial, and my last name/surname. This username is rarely taken...So meh, i got used to it, and simply use it online - like here on Tildes.

I use "mxuribe" for whenever I want to project "the real me" online...but since so many places can tie it back to me, i have started to dabble in creating alter egos with different usernames....Partly for OpSec on certain platforms, but more so to have some safe fun. I had not done this sort of thing (creating alter egos with no true negative consequences to anyione)) since like the early 2000s. But, i do avoid having both my "real" and alter personas on the same platforms at the same...since i don't want to break any sorts of rules or EULAs on platforms. Nowadays, either my real user or my fake one lives on a platform - but never both at the same time.

I picked something stupid under the assumption that this community would stay tiny forever. Boy do I look goofy now

I wanted something that was really obscure to the average person but works as a great calling card to those in the know. I work in the field of molecular biology and in my lab I'm known as the expert of running EMSA experiments (electrophoretic mobility shift assays). Since it's a less widely used technique now a days I made my username hoping to find other people that relate to it and appreciate seeing the reference the same way I love recognizing odd references in usernames.

It came from combining the words for man/husband and woman/wife in the military phrasebook for some language I can't remember I was issued on my way to Afghanistan in 2003. I thought it was Pashto, but looking into it over the years, I don't think that's correct. (it is possible that the phrasebook was wrong, or it was for a different language, but I have no clue anymore).

It's been my username on just about everything since I got back from Afghanistan.

Because I'm not that creative and the other character on the tilde key is the backtick `

It's a shortened version of the name I've used elsewhere for the past 20 years. I grab it if it's available, which is pretty rare except for federated things like Mastodon.

But after 20 years of using the longer version on forums and across different sites, it's about as identifying as my real name, so I'm trying to get away from it a bit. Keep more separation between my random online interactions and my actual identity. Diff works pretty well for that, being basically unsearchable if you're looking for Diff the person. Meanwhile searching the longer version in any engine basically hands you a consolidated listing of all of my online activity since I first got online.

It’s short for Narrator, I’ve never used the name anywhere else, and it’s not even kind of like my other usernames elsewhere. Someone else made the same point that I would: I value my privacy and don’t really want to be followed around the Internet. I don’t know why I chose it, it just sprang to mind and was available.

I take this username everytime and everywhere. It is kinda unique by itself. It has a backstory:

In my teens I frequently went into PC gaming room/corner/shop (whatever, bunch of PCs powerful enough to run modern games at the time connected into LAN and you could play there for some money per hour). When I first stepped in, admin asked me what my nickname would be there. On the spot I immediatelly thought "spider", because of the badass plasma shooting mech in Earth 2140. Yet, spider was taken. Me, still thinking the badass mech, just translated to my nativelabguage, Czech, which is "pavouk". To nobody's surprise, this one wasn't taken. And since then, for around 22 years, I'm known as Pavouk. For some time, I actually used tilde before the nickname - ~Pavouk. You may still find me here and there in his older format. Tilde became nuisance on a few sites not accepting it in username, so I went for adding number 106 which is some kind of friends/group favorite number since school. So Pavouk106, that's me. And that is why I use this username here too.

I don't use the same name across platforms. This time I decided it was AC/DCs turn to inspire and it's one of my favourite tracks.

It's just the name i use pretty much everywhere (except in games where it is the name of the character, there i usually just go for Phoenix). I created it forever ago as a mix of the names of two youtubers I liked watching (neither of which i watch today) and a random number. And the most random number I could come up with was 28. And i just stuck with it.

There might be better ones, but i'm happy with it.

I have had the same username across everywhere for nearly 20 years ^ ... I think I use it more than my own name. I don't even think about it

I greatly enjoy little Middle Eastern appetizers. It's also easy to spell and say, not too short nor long, and completely different from all my other online handles which is a nice bonus for the anonymity.

I just like the name; it doesn't have any special meaning to me. Also, I wanted something different from my reddit user name, just for a fresh start.

I just had mine changed from my old Reddit name to terr.

Terr Grey was my main character in Star Wars Galaxy. I picked the name Terr because you would send tells to characters' first names and Terr can easily be typed with just the left hand on qwerty keyboards. Since I was playing an Image Designer who relied on human players as clientele I wanted to be easy to contact, so that's where it comes from!

Since those days, Terr's been my gaming personality for more humanized characters, hard workers, people intending to form a relationship with NPCs, basically a personification of my least edgelord-y tendencies, which are reserved for my Zeitghast gaming persona. I figured the friendly humanizing persona was the better hat to wear with this community.

It reminds me to be my best self. A lot of times I’ll get way too caught up to see the forest for the trees and even roleplaying as my username helps to bring the calm vibe into my real life. 33 helps to remind me I am not the first or last person to think the ways I do.

Mine is one I've used across the internet for years. It's (perhaps unwisely) a combination of my initials and my birthday, but it also works because I'm in law school at the moment.

Because I am definitely not a fae. Not in the slightest.

(I tend to make larp/D&D characters that have fae/faerie like backgrounds and I'm a hopeless fantasy nerd that would love there to be hidden magic around us if I could JUST. FIND. IT.)

I created this username for my first Reddit account as I had just become a locksmith. As it happens, people on Reddit around 10 years ago were very excited to find a locksmith on Reddit, and asked me to do an AMA, which is where a bunch of that account's karma came from. I was young and dumb and barely knew anything, but it was a fun first experience on the site.
When I came here, I figured I'd keep the name since I 1) generally try really hard not to say things I'll regret on the internet and 2) think it would be nice if another Reddit escapee recognized the name and felt even a bit more welcome here because of it.
I'm still a locksmith, I'm still pretty dumb (but in new, exciting ways!) and I feel more than ever that there is much for me to learn. At least I'm not still young ):

Mine also came from KOTH! It was just a small throwaway line that I thought was too funny- Bobby and Joseph are getting ready for their first hunting trip with Hank and Dale and they're chatting about something or other, I don't remember what exactly, and Bobby mentions you have to be careful or you'll get stuck with an awful nickname, and Joseph pipes up "like pork pockets?"

God that show is so good for little random things like that

Because I have isolated myself since the start of COVID and have successfully earned my Hermit patch. And I can't take it anymore. I need friends that I didn't meet at work.

The username won't do anything to make friends -- it's just what was on my mind while I was brainstorming new names.

It was, and is, what's in front of me.

I foster a LOT of kittens.

Im da bes

Because it's me.

I joined Discord an Steam way after joining Reddit (I was really poor for a while) and so my Tildes name is the same as it is on those platforms.

I chose this name for those platforms because it's a combination of a nickname I got along with my favorite machine gun. Oddly it's always been available for me.

I wanted something that signaled I was a swede with a faiblesse for tanks and that wasn't my old reddit-username.

It's just my name!

I'm Dangerous Dan McGrew, bare fist fighter extraordinaire!

one of my first and favorite console games was MGS4, I thought the big cow robots were cool

Needed a name for Neopets or RuneScape when I was a kid. I was a big Star Wars fan and went into the Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds internal encyclopedia thing and picked a name that was short and sounded cool. I've been using some form of it, usually with 99 because I thought that sounded cool since it was the max skill level in Runescape, since then.

My friend saw my name on Reddit awhile ago and said "whoa you have a 4 letter name!" I didn't realize those were uncommon or anything since I've been using it for so long and honestly forget to look at people's usernames a lot of the time when I'm a platform like this or Reddit.

I really like playing wizards in games. That and I'm of the opinion that adjective/verb noun (or vice versa) is generally the best way of making usernames that are less common to not be taken everywhere and not long enough to breach 20ish characters that some places have as a limit.

I was adding random names to be used in Smash Bros Ultimate and added Tosti. After a while I added some letters and ended with Tonstie

So, I pick a different name each time for each site, and try to make them meaningful. Sometimes it's a character from some media I'm enjoying, other times like this I'm in an introspective mood. I don't tend to participate much, nor do my comments attract much attention, so all I am is a ghost, an insubstantial vapour, drifting on the wind.

It's actually a Beastie Boys reference. Comes from the song Body Movin'.

Also appears pretty soon in alphabetical order, which might be benificial.

It's something Aang says in AtlA at some point. I don't know if it's a curse, the equivalent of "dang" or maybe something a bit more potent like "goddammit", but for some reason that expression stuck and I'm using it regularly. And of course feathered monkeys are cool and are something you would expect in that world.

Well, it's my name. I've historically used "jonahisadev" to describe not only my name but my occupation, but I find that my name on its own is a little cleaner and a bit more personal which I feel is the vibe of the site. I was surprised to see that it was available, so I took it. I do tend to lurk more than I post, so I'd be willing to give up the username someday if it became a nuisance to others.

My username on Tildes relates to my username on Reddit: something I came up with when I was 13 and which doesn't accord with something I would come up with from scratch now. Hmm... perhaps I should have went for a clean break as this website is a new leaf. If I were to ask Deimos for a new username it would probably be some silly geological concept... but ultimately 'slug' is fine by me too.

Cause I'm riiiiiiiich bitch!!!!!

It's my FFXIV character name, which has since transcended to be my universal online user name. It's unique and I know it'll always be available.

A few years ago, I stopped using consistent usernames across any services. My usernames are completely random.

This is me, as succinct as I can possibly make it. There's very little to differentiate me from anyone else you might encounter online.

It's my name :D

I've been using a variation of this since my sophomore year of college. It or something very much like it has been my username for 20+ years now. Because I see no reason to use something else, here I am.

Same as my reddit username. I don't really use social media and used different handles before joining up for Reddit. I've been aware of Tildes for years but only joined up recently to get away from Reddit, and figured I would use the same username so that the occasional person might remember seeing me around.

I like Berserk manga.

In general I deliberately use inconsistent/silly shit for all sorts of accounts, and I've gotten rid of really all my social media. This username is my first name. It's the only piece of myself I broadcast online, I don't have other social media accounts and I don't use authentic information where it's possible. I want most of what's out there about me to be hard to find and messy. But in this one way, this one place, I do want to be a little more authentic. The one account where I do share online, what I'm about/what I've got/etc.

Because this has been my internet moniker for nearly three decades now.

Spent embarrassingly long time on picking the name, as all the nicknames I've been using were available. Decided that I wanted something short, and that sounds nice in English when proncouned by anglos (So I think!), it also gives a hint where I live.

Because that's who I am.

I always used my real name for my usernames but I decided I want to get some anonimity. I wanted to get a chess related one but didn't want to steal youtuber ones or have something like En passant even if it's epic. So I thought and I decided to get one of the big flexes to beat an opponent, underpromoting the pawn.

I am extremely uncreative with words, I have spent months/years trying to come up with band names with practically 0 success.

I wish it weren't the case I had my name because of internet, but here I am.

I’ve tried this name once before and happened to remember it at the right time here. And what an image it brings to mind.
Hopefully it makes people a little happier to see such a silly name.

This is my username for everything, so it was an easy choice.

The name itself was a reference to Kingdom Hearts, where characters have an evil(?) duplicate who shares their name, but with an x in it. My friend came up with this years ago and I've used it for basically everything since.

My Tildes username is the same as my Reddit username that I've had for 11 years. What spawned me picking "eggplant" (the "4" for an "a" is because eggplant was taken, not sure why I specifically picked to replace that character with a number) was a memory of me and my best friend hanging out at a camp when we were teens, getting bored, and deciding that the names of vegetables in Russian sounded hilarious. So we went back and forth enunciating vegetable names in Russian. We were also recording the audio on a cellphone. I started with "eggplants" (баклажаны) and after a bit of back and forth, it was my turn again and I ran out of vegetables names and said eggplants again. The audio ended with us both laughing since I had already said eggplants. It was innocent fun, a happy memory.

Just my name!

Honestly I’m pretty happy since I’ve never had a ‘simple’ username before and it’s nice just to be know on mute internet by my name. Here’s hoping I represent the other Jarvis’ nicely :)

I was a kid who liked bacon and modified a auto generated username to reflect that.

I've used the same online name since 1998 everywhere I go with some minor additions if necessary because oddly enough this one is occasionally taken LOL!

I love space, I love Star Wars.

I have had this same screen name, which i have used for everything since GameFaqs started their webforum in 2000. I just dont see a reason to switch at this point, im not aiming for online anonymity.

I've had this (or variations of this name) for the past 20 years. No special meaning besides the fact that I live on an island. What has surprised me over the years is when the name is taken already (which seems to happen more and more over the years.) But make no mistake, I am the original.

I’ve never been on a site developing from the ground up so most things are usually taken. I wanted a single-word name for an adult so I went with a mix of synthesis (for its multitude of relevant definitions) and sinistra (Latin for “on the left” e.g. piano music notations and dexterity)

I feel like mine is a deep cut, but I'd happily be proven wrong :) any guesses???

I believe that, objectively, short usernames denote high status and long usernames denote low status. For instance if I made some name like IWantKonataToBeMyOtherWaifu I am mashing together two jokes and many people won't get the first. Any username that has a lot of digits in it is starting to look like SomeUnremarkableRando82615246719.

I picked UP8 when I was playing League of Legends a long time ago, because it had the merits of being (1) short and (2) coming across as basically positive, e.g. "UP" is positive in western culture and "8" is a lucky number in Chinese culture which you can rub shoulders with a lot in that kind of gaming.

I think I hardly ever use the same name on anything. But coming to tildes I was very interested in the tabletop role playing game community here. Definitely seems to need more activity if the username Gm wasn’t taken! Now if I could just think of something interesting to post a topic about…

It's been my user name everywhere for the last decade and a half. I use it for almost everything

Rance Muhammitz is a character played by Theodore Bickel in the Movie 200 Motels (featuring Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention). Rance owns Centerville. Is he a man? Mysteries abound.

I tried signing up for my first Hotmail account as fartman like 25 years ago but I accidentally added an 's'. The little typo made it unique enough so that until recently I always able to use it for all of my accounts.

I wanted a unique username that was quirky aswell

Thought it would be funny.

I've always liked words with interesting sounds involved in them, so I picked mine based on liking words with "sq" in them and how the word "skew" sounded. Kinda odd, but kinda fun to me at least.

Big weeb username but I am lowkey regretting it

I just pick a different username per account, allows me to contribute in discussions without having people stalk my profile across platforms.

I just wanted people to know the correct pronunciation

I picked the handle since I gotten fed up with my previous one. I carry this one on multiple socials now and got a matching tattoo. If the three character one is taken I switch to its six character sibling, which I also have the domain for.

I started using this handle online a little ways back when I was occasionally streaming on Twitch. Slowly it spread to most of my gaming / online accounts, so it's just kind of what I use now.

Acorn actually came from my first random Xbox Live gamer tag, SlushiestAcorn. I let that one go or something, then it was RebornAcorn, and then Mammothly Acorn (inside joke), and finally I just reduced it to Acorn when I switched from console to PC gaming.

It comes from a speech by David Hilbert which turned out to be hilariously wrong.

It describes me well and I use it all over the internet [don't look for it].

Because it's, uh, me?

It was my Reddit username, and it's a Mix Master Mike reference.

Because do you really expect me to not push you up against the wall, beeyotch!!!

Literally a variation of my name in one of the languages.

Because I like cloth…And music.
(And reverse Teen Girl Squad references.)

Nothing special, it's just unique to me! Usually the straight "Buzwell" is taken, so I go with a variation.

My username is pretty much one massive reference to Grand Blue, which is a diving manga.

I have a couple handles I've been using since the mid 90s. This is one, after reading Dr. ML King's quote “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”, when I realized that I say a lot of stupid stuff online. And in general, but that's unrelated...
So I embraced the flaw and the name keeps me reminded that maybe I shouldn't hit "post" this time...

Been using it for years. Was originally my brother's tag when used to play Halo 1 online through GameSpy. He doesn't use any sites like this and doesn't use the name anymore either so I've stolen it.

This is the ideal version of my handle from my PS2 online days.
I've had an iteration or another of it for more than 15 years & I've finally been able to nail it in it's purest form and no, it's not Judge Advocate General.

A student at a school I used to work at called me it, after she found out where I have family from (she was like 12 maybe) and I remembered it and went with that.

Cause I like Disco Elysium.

My username is from Impractical Jokers about Joey Turncoat, the man who kidnapped the vice president and was exiled from Jamaica

It works on multiple levels: I'm a space nerd, a space case, and I love space games, especially space combat.

The word woeps is similair in use to the English word: whoops.

It became my nickname IRL as I'm known to use the word when things reeeeealy get bad (think car crash bad) instead of cursing.

So yeah... guess it just stuck

I chose my username because I love learning new things.

First I considered something with the word inquisitive but deemed it too easily misunderstood (didn't want to come across as nosy). Something with curious was considered, but I didn't want an association with Curious George. Curiosity was better and invited something about cats, which are my favourite animal, but cats are generally associated with female personas, partly because Cat can be short for Catherine, so that was out.

Lynx on the other hand are my favourite wild animals and years before I'd combined a German nickname containing "Lux" with a profile picture of a lynx (lynx in German is "Luchs", which isn't all that far from "Lux" in terms of pronunciation). Lynx are also felids, so something like "curiosity killed the cat" might also be stretched to include lynx, and they don't have the association with female personas.

So that's how I arrived at my nickname.

As a bonus, I can easily pretend to be a feline if the context invites such silliness and I'm in the mood for it. Kind of the opposite of the "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" comic. Mostly riffing on curiosity killed the cat plus cats have multiple lives myths. I had fun visiting talesfromcavesupport@kbin.social to ask in the welcome post if I can sleep and hide in the cave when it rains if I promise not to harm any hominids and asking if leaving a paw print instead of a hand print in the guestbook on the guestwall would also be okay.

Came here when RIF shut off.

Why settle for special when you can be very special?

Casual indifference.

I was PitchforkAssistant on Reddit, but just Pitchfork was available here, so I went with that.

Because Asuka is best girl. It's pretty simple when it comes down to it.

I've had this user name for decades, I came up with it for a game I started at the time, can't recall the name but it was around the time of warcraft/StarCraft era

To watch over all of you.