MIKEAPOLLO@aol.com (I was very into all caps as well as the Apollo space program)
An interesting timing coincidence: about an hour ago, coming from the office next to mine, I heard the once-ubiquitous sound of "You've Got Mail!" I didn't even know how to respond, it felt like discovering one of those un-contacted tribes in Africa.
DeepOmega was my first, and so it shall be until I die, because nobody ever registers it before me. The story of where it is from is PRETTY EMBARRASSING though.
@boyofdestiny FINE. I was in a communications arts magnet middle school (LADIES). The final project for one class involved basically pitching any sort of creative story-telling thing to the teacher and then doing it – so I made an adventure game, since this was when I still thought video games would be a fun thing to do with my life. (They are not.) I made this elaborate detective-oriented game, and in it there was a conspiracy organization called Omega56 that lived in an underground bunker called Deep9. So I stuck the two together and took out the numbers, and now every time I get an instant message I remember how awful the drawings I made for that game were. So awful.
@deepomega Thank goodness for this thread, because I always want to ask people what their handles are about, but that seems like such a fucking lame question for a grownup to ask.
Anyway, this is the Platonic ideal of a First Internet Handle Origin Story.
Year I was born. Okay, well since we're both Year of the Roosters (Are we? I have no idea and don't care) I'll let this one slide, but you should know that I probably missed out on a lot of great fulfilling hookups because of you. I hope those hookups were worth it. I hope you got everything our handle suggests you were in for.
Why: I was an intern at Pets.com in early 2000. It's complicated, but basically my assignment was to write email copy urging pet owners to help their pets open up online accounts and profiles at Pets.com so that the pets could communicate with each other by email and across our easy-to-use open platform. The idea was that the pets would then form into self-organizing emergent networks which the company could then target for sales of virtual goods that the pets would pay for with "Behavioral Biscuits" or BB's. For example, a virtual bone for a miniature schnauzer might cost 14 BB's. The schnauzer would earn the BB's by virtually urinating in the corner of the doggy chat room when appropriate and encouraging, say, an Irish Setter to poop on the bluish-gray cloud icon next to the chat bar. I chose donotreply@pets.com because I didn't want a bunch of fucking dogs, cats and parrots emailing me all the time with stupid questions.
@Rosebud Even after all these years I'd just like to have my old job back. Every now and then, maybe once every six months, I email my former bosses from that old email account, but they never respond.
@Screen Name: As someone who escaped an e-business consulting firm in late 2000 when the walls were already crumbling, I love this story endlessly and with all my heart.
It's still the same AOL email address that I use for logging into this site, and I have had it for 16 years. I'm not posting it here though lest the spambots have their way with me!
On several BBS's I went by "Conscience", which was kinda fun I guess (genesis: my best friend had made fun of me for being too jiminy-cricketish about our online endeavors). When I started the Prodigy teen boards' "Monty Python Fan Club" – or MPFC for short, included in signatures with varying punctuation around it as was the style at the time – I was "SirNot", of course short for "Sir Not Appearing on this Message Board."
My first email address was assigned to me at college, where I was "jgf1@cornell.edu", which I always hated because I never use my middle initial. When I was applying to grad school some professor I was corresponding with there had the email "[first initial][first four letters of last name]@berkeley.edu" and and I figured that's how they did it there. When I actually got there however I found out that you could pick whatever name you wanted, but I had already decided that I liked "jfruh@berkeley.edu" and the rest is history, especially once I acquired jfruh.com. Still mad that someone beat me to jfruh.tumblr.com (though that is probably the only thing that's prevented me from wasting yet more hours of my life with a stupid tumblr).
Also, I first signed up for AIM after meeting a girl on a plane back from my first trip to Italy; she wanted to chat w/me on AIM so I felt I had to pick something cool for e-flirting. So I picked "stalexius," because while in Italy I saw a church that contained an ancient staircase where St. Alexius had been martyred, by being pushed down the stairs, which I found hilarious. SURPRISE ENDING: None of the AIM-chatting resulted in a love connection with this lady!
Mine was stipe12. I was really in to R.E.M. when my household got AOL, and stipes one through eleven were taken. Imagine my surprise when I got an IM out of the blue from stipe13!
The current one came after I arrived back in town circa 2004 and a quick survey revealed a preponderance of handles mixing and matching : sexy,69,First name,Dj,Ethnic slur,and Thug Quote.
On AIM I chose the screen name wytte1 because witty1 and wittyone were already taken. Then junior or senior o' college there was a discussion about the proper pronunciation – everyone thought it was either "whitey one" or "white one" – which confused everyone because I'm not white. I think about it sometimes and die of embarrassment.
My dad set up the university email account for me because I was into the Beanie Babies website and stuff. It was '97ish was like, 9 or 10.
When I first chose my own a year or so later when free email providers got popular, it was something like "lulukitty" which was the name of my cat. She's still alive, too!
Ruprecht76@aol.com after Steve Martin's mentally deficient character within a character from Dirty Rotten Scroundrels. Because I wanted people to think I was dumb, apparently.
I've mostly been a variant of Brunhilde/Broomhilda something… although I think my ICQ handle was AssyFerguson and I've used Auriga in a few usernames too.
Can't remember the handles assigned to me in undergrad/MA, but the first handle I chose for myself, circa 1994, was cinetrix@aol.com. Some German dominatrix bitch had ganked it by the time I moved to yahoo [where I became cinetrixie a.k.a. "Trixie" during my first forays into the blogosphere], then I got it back at gmail. The end.
Because it was dark and I was into stones and [jumps off bridge].
Ugh. My parents got me my own phone line around this time. And the number they picked was 818-981-ONYX. Which was mortifying, because I couldn't explain it to anyone. Obviously.
And also because, in numbers, that's 818-981-6699.
Which is a weird phone number for a 15-year-old to have.
My early screennames are all too boring to mention, but for the past few years I have had the habit of naming all my peripherals and gadgets after various characters from Master & Margarita. So like usually my external HD is "Begemot", my phone is "Azazello", and my computer itself is "Master" or "Woland", and so forth…
latindoll@aol.com, after I went to the puerto rican day parade and decided passing for a Puerto Rican was more fun than being a boring ol' high yellow black chick.
Geez, I had the obligatory Prodigy random letters & numbers thing. Can't remember who I was on CompuServe. And I could never be bothered to think of a non-lame username, so mine have all just been variations on my IRL name. Booooring.
azulcamisa. Blue shirt. I am soooooo clever! Then it was iwilleatursoul.
There is a girl from my high school whose name was literally all lower cased, no spaced first and last name of a classmate with a unique name. If I remember right she had a pretty standard name and got sick of coming up with variations. It was amazingly funny but confusing.
heya7@aol
MIKEAPOLLO@aol.com (I was very into all caps as well as the Apollo space program)
An interesting timing coincidence: about an hour ago, coming from the office next to mine, I heard the once-ubiquitous sound of "You've Got Mail!" I didn't even know how to respond, it felt like discovering one of those un-contacted tribes in Africa.
@Michael J. Levy@facebook weee wwee wee, wohh wooh wooh. we-oh. we-oh. urrrrp.
DeepOmega was my first, and so it shall be until I die, because nobody ever registers it before me. The story of where it is from is PRETTY EMBARRASSING though.
@deepomega (Seventh grade was mostly an embarrassing time.)
@deepomega Ok, I'll bite. How embarrassing is it?
@deepomega I'm still swizzard just about everywhere online that doesn't just use my email (first.last@gmail, duh.)
Mine's origin story isn't that embarrassing, just another nerdy tile in the elaborate mosaic that is my lifetime of geekiness.
@boyofdestiny FINE. I was in a communications arts magnet middle school (LADIES). The final project for one class involved basically pitching any sort of creative story-telling thing to the teacher and then doing it – so I made an adventure game, since this was when I still thought video games would be a fun thing to do with my life. (They are not.) I made this elaborate detective-oriented game, and in it there was a conspiracy organization called Omega56 that lived in an underground bunker called Deep9. So I stuck the two together and took out the numbers, and now every time I get an instant message I remember how awful the drawings I made for that game were. So awful.
@deepomega Thank goodness for this thread, because I always want to ask people what their handles are about, but that seems like such a fucking lame question for a grownup to ask.
Anyway, this is the Platonic ideal of a First Internet Handle Origin Story.
@deepomega NERD.
@deepomega
Question: Where can I play this game?
@djfreshie: Given that it was hand-made in Borland Delphi circa 1999, probably nowhere, ever. But I still have the CD! (With original art!)
@deepomega
Can you make me a C64 compatible version?
@djfreshie Shit for some reason that just made me remember the best part of this. The detective you played as in the game was named MIKE HARDING.
@deepomega
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, okay. There should be a new thread: #firstseriouslyintentionedfictionalcharactername.
JOHNNY FAMOUS
@djfreshie JACK THUNDER
@deepomega
It's a great formula. Standard first name + badass second name. Steven Segal made a career of it.
domsubleatherdaddy51watersportsfoot2me@aol
@whizzard Sorry, I didn't realize this was a serious topic, are handles for instant messaging or can it be old email names too?
@whizzard
FUCK you're the reason I had to register domsubleatherdaddy51watersportsfoot2me81@aol?
Asshole.
@djfreshie the older the grosser, so you win, unless that's the year you were born, in which case: samesies!
@whizzard
Year I was born. Okay, well since we're both Year of the Roosters (Are we? I have no idea and don't care) I'll let this one slide, but you should know that I probably missed out on a lot of great fulfilling hookups because of you. I hope those hookups were worth it. I hope you got everything our handle suggests you were in for.
@whizzard And more! I know, that handle is pretty embarrassing, nobody uses AOL these days.
mrbrent. Old nickname.
Nice try but you'll never get this information out of me while I'm sober
This is easy! It was actually TymBoD, short for "Tim, Boy of Destiny" (TimBoD being already taken. If you're reading this, TimBoD, go fuck yourself.)
RentedThugs.
@HiredGoons callme@juno.com
SonikBoom2000@aol.com
Even my dad thought it was stupid.
donotreply@pets.com
Why: I was an intern at Pets.com in early 2000. It's complicated, but basically my assignment was to write email copy urging pet owners to help their pets open up online accounts and profiles at Pets.com so that the pets could communicate with each other by email and across our easy-to-use open platform. The idea was that the pets would then form into self-organizing emergent networks which the company could then target for sales of virtual goods that the pets would pay for with "Behavioral Biscuits" or BB's. For example, a virtual bone for a miniature schnauzer might cost 14 BB's. The schnauzer would earn the BB's by virtually urinating in the corner of the doggy chat room when appropriate and encouraging, say, an Irish Setter to poop on the bluish-gray cloud icon next to the chat bar. I chose donotreply@pets.com because I didn't want a bunch of fucking dogs, cats and parrots emailing me all the time with stupid questions.
@Screen Name There's so much to this story that is hard to process…
@Rosebud Even after all these years I'd just like to have my old job back. Every now and then, maybe once every six months, I email my former bosses from that old email account, but they never respond.
@Screen Name: As someone who escaped an e-business consulting firm in late 2000 when the walls were already crumbling, I love this story endlessly and with all my heart.
@Screen Name I WANT to believe this. Okay I believe it.
It's still the same AOL email address that I use for logging into this site, and I have had it for 16 years. I'm not posting it here though lest the spambots have their way with me!
On several BBS's I went by "Conscience", which was kinda fun I guess (genesis: my best friend had made fun of me for being too jiminy-cricketish about our online endeavors). When I started the Prodigy teen boards' "Monty Python Fan Club" – or MPFC for short, included in signatures with varying punctuation around it as was the style at the time – I was "SirNot", of course short for "Sir Not Appearing on this Message Board."
I wanna go give 13 year old me a wedgie.
@Br. Seamus it's fine. i sold beanie babies on the discussion boards of prodigy.
TheSFDragon. Because I was from near SF, and dragons are rad, and also I was 11.
Clearly, I have outgrown that ridiculous phase and am now way into dinosaurs.
@Multiphasic
But we can talk about Chester Centaur, Ackbar, Siegfried the Pop-Punk Dweeb, the Tamagotchi Killa, and DJ Fatkid at a later date.
@Multiphasic Oh and I pretended to be ConBon for a night, but that was IRL.
@Multiphasic !!!
Are we really doing this?
Fine: cannibalxl
@Clarence Rosario That was on Netcom, BTW.
@Clarence Rosario: Were you a large cannibal, or a cannibal that only ate large people?
@deepomega Is there any other kind?
we had prodigy and they didn't let you 1) choose your own name, or 2) have more than one log in per account. our family log in was 'YLGN40B.'
@becky@twitter YOU were YLGN40B?
It's me! MCCT29C!
@Multiphasic oh em gee! after all these years!
It was GQmanJU. I was in high school, so I was neither GQ or (legally) a man. But JU were really my initials, so it wasn't all lies.
(first Name)_(last name)
I would have included my address if there had been enough room.
My first email address was assigned to me at college, where I was "jgf1@cornell.edu", which I always hated because I never use my middle initial. When I was applying to grad school some professor I was corresponding with there had the email "[first initial][first four letters of last name]@berkeley.edu" and and I figured that's how they did it there. When I actually got there however I found out that you could pick whatever name you wanted, but I had already decided that I liked "jfruh@berkeley.edu" and the rest is history, especially once I acquired jfruh.com. Still mad that someone beat me to jfruh.tumblr.com (though that is probably the only thing that's prevented me from wasting yet more hours of my life with a stupid tumblr).
Also, I first signed up for AIM after meeting a girl on a plane back from my first trip to Italy; she wanted to chat w/me on AIM so I felt I had to pick something cool for e-flirting. So I picked "stalexius," because while in Italy I saw a church that contained an ancient staircase where St. Alexius had been martyred, by being pushed down the stairs, which I found hilarious. SURPRISE ENDING: None of the AIM-chatting resulted in a love connection with this lady!
Mine was stipe12. I was really in to R.E.M. when my household got AOL, and stipes one through eleven were taken. Imagine my surprise when I got an IM out of the blue from stipe13!
DickJamesColdBlooded@aol.com
I wish.
gossiprincess AKA GP AKA geepee
So what do I win??
@jolie: A CompuServe email address.
Traveller, circa 1993. It was a local BBS.
I really wanted to get out of town.
The current one came after I arrived back in town circa 2004 and a quick survey revealed a preponderance of handles mixing and matching : sexy,69,First name,Dj,Ethnic slur,and Thug Quote.
i'm pretty sure mine was XbArCoDeX for the prodigy chat room i frequented, though i can't be sure.
First one that wasn't my name or randomly assigned letters and numbers was SpringTour.
@SidAndFinancy Go ahead and admit it was SpringTour@aol.com. Doesn't it feel better to let it out?
On AIM I chose the screen name wytte1 because witty1 and wittyone were already taken. Then junior or senior o' college there was a discussion about the proper pronunciation – everyone thought it was either "whitey one" or "white one" – which confused everyone because I'm not white. I think about it sometimes and die of embarrassment.
summerdaze@hotmail.com The days< ->daze homophony was a real triumph of wit for me at the time.
The oldest AIM name I can remember was N0TCREEPYATALL.
a/s/l?
My first one was inspired by a very early McSweeney's piece. This is the only pseudonym I use that doesn't sound like a genuine name.
I bet Balk chose THUMBHAVER [see tag] because it sounds vaguely like a funny-sounding English estate.
@hman When I first read the tag I thought it said THUMBSHAVER and was like, "Yeah, sounds about right."
@hman That's what I get for thinking BLOWJOBLIKER was too obvious. No more subtlety for me!
Cashflow@umich.edu (circa 1992, back when we used Pine to access email)
I really don't remember it. I thought it was too long anyway: some shit like mylastname0034237@ba.bah.booey.university.edu
My dad set up the university email account for me because I was into the Beanie Babies website and stuff. It was '97ish was like, 9 or 10.
When I first chose my own a year or so later when free email providers got popular, it was something like "lulukitty" which was the name of my cat. She's still alive, too!
shadoex on aim. still have it! hit me up! 29/m/nyc
@narnio Aww remember the night you revealed your Gawker screenname at Media Meshing and proceeded to have a panic attack about????????
@jolie SERIOUSLY, JUST "IM" ME ABOUT THESE THINGS (and yes)
@narnio NO PROBLEM, RY- ERM.. UM.. I MEAN… NARNIO
Ruprecht76@aol.com after Steve Martin's mentally deficient character within a character from Dirty Rotten Scroundrels. Because I wanted people to think I was dumb, apparently.
I've mostly been a variant of Brunhilde/Broomhilda something… although I think my ICQ handle was AssyFerguson and I've used Auriga in a few usernames too.
I no longer remember what the actual email address was, but I know it was on BITNET.
OLD SCHOOL, quite literally.
On Echo, one's handle wasn't one's ID. On the Well, they were the same. Either way, I'm revealing neither.
Mine was wert.
Actually just wert.
Guess what my password was.
@tumblingwall heimer? birdthounever?
NPVX84A, on Prodigy, they were assigned! Can't remember my Compuserve one. But the first I made myself was wickham, for Wodehouse's Bobbie Wickham.
Can't remember the handles assigned to me in undergrad/MA, but the first handle I chose for myself, circa 1994, was cinetrix@aol.com. Some German dominatrix bitch had ganked it by the time I moved to yahoo [where I became cinetrixie a.k.a. "Trixie" during my first forays into the blogosphere], then I got it back at gmail. The end.
Oh God.
"Onyx"
Because it was dark and I was into stones and [jumps off bridge].
Ugh. My parents got me my own phone line around this time. And the number they picked was 818-981-ONYX. Which was mortifying, because I couldn't explain it to anyone. Obviously.
And also because, in numbers, that's 818-981-6699.
Which is a weird phone number for a 15-year-old to have.
Ok! Off to hide now.
My early screennames are all too boring to mention, but for the past few years I have had the habit of naming all my peripherals and gadgets after various characters from Master & Margarita. So like usually my external HD is "Begemot", my phone is "Azazello", and my computer itself is "Master" or "Woland", and so forth…
latindoll@aol.com, after I went to the puerto rican day parade and decided passing for a Puerto Rican was more fun than being a boring ol' high yellow black chick.
Geez, I had the obligatory Prodigy random letters & numbers thing. Can't remember who I was on CompuServe. And I could never be bothered to think of a non-lame username, so mine have all just been variations on my IRL name. Booooring.
azulcamisa. Blue shirt. I am soooooo clever! Then it was iwilleatursoul.
There is a girl from my high school whose name was literally all lower cased, no spaced first and last name of a classmate with a unique name. If I remember right she had a pretty standard name and got sick of coming up with variations. It was amazingly funny but confusing.