http://www.good.is/post/the-eternal-sha ... ine-handle

I saw this via neatorama, and thought it was kinda interesting. I know there's quite a few folks here I know solely by their usernames, and when I see them in real life feel more comfortable calling them by it (although I usually don't). In fact my username has become part of my identity- it really is like my second name to me. So what's the story behind your names? What was your first handle?

I get asked about mine from time to time, so in a effort to start this thread I'll share the secret origin of hellopike.

I've used "Pike" as my online name since about 1993, on local BBSes before the days of widespread internet.. Named after my first D&D character (awesome right?) I was 13 or 14 at the time. Then my family got Comcast about a year later and I got to pick an email address and pike@comcast was taken.. I don't remember exactly why, if I saw a picture at the time or something else, but when I was trying to come up with a variation on "Pike" I thought of everyone's favorite Japanese mascot- Hellokitty, and thought it was hilarious. And so I became hellopike, and I've been hellopike since.

And its "Hellopike", not "Hello-pike" or "hello pike". And I'm the only one, except no substitutions.


So what's your story?

Phil

My first online handle was on AOL, and was AWAP.
It was from a cartoon I drew of Jesus being thwacked by a newspaper that got me in trouble in sixth grade. The sound effect was A-WAP!
That was... 1995?
I still use awap@aol.com as an email acct.

Wow, great post Phil. Thanks for the idea and sharing that article. I won't bore everyone with my SB handle, as it is pretty self-explanatory to anyone reading this board (other people, on the other hand... )

I similarly was first exposed to the internet through the old BBSes that were around, and although I wasn't part of the DnD thing, I can really appreciate it from a fellow nerd outcast point-of-view [wait, nerds are cool now right?] Anyways, I can share a bit of my other general online handle, which is 'spacemoose.' Like most people back in the day, the name picked was pretty random, I don't think most of us ever thought that the internet would take off the way it did, and if it did, that we would become so tied to these "identities." My name comes from an independent comic from the University of Alberta paper, and you'll have to look it up for more info than that.

I recall very vividly while starting university in the growth period of the internet, actually making a list with tonnes of potential handles; this was when things like ebay and AOL were starting out, and long before you could just 'google' things you liked for potential names. And I have tried many times over the years to change to something else, what with all the email accounts and whatnot that come up, but somehow the original just sticks. I don't even really get why I chose it, and looking back, I can't even imagine I understood most of the comic. In the end though, I thought it was cool, and in hindsight, it worked out well for me, as it reflects a bit about me in my Canadian roots and my love for sci-fi (though, I should point out, for anyone looking up the comic, I am die-hard Star WARS fan, not to offend any trekkies on this board)

Pikachu85
That was back in 1994 or 1995. Being a young lad at the time, I didn't previously have e-mail or experience in chat rooms and such. My class was the first through my school to start avidly using the web in 93, and I was so excited to find that I could ignore subjects at hand and geek out over videogame webpages. This lead to the abuse of school printers & supplies after hours, as I'd end up making binders with videogame info (like a printed page for each Mortal Kombat / Street Fighter character, and all their moves) since I didn't have the web at home. I was really movin' on up when I chose that panty-droppin handle a year later.

Crab Rangoon came about in 1999 when trying to adorn Phantasy Star Online characters with fun & strange names. It stuck pretty well ever since.

Having a printout of those moves was crucial!! People can't even imagine playing games for hours that you couldn't just go online and find the solution for in matter of minutes (I am thinking especially of Star Trek 25th Anniversary). This also brings to mind when you copied games with your friends, you had to have the all important photocopy of the manual, which randomly had the secret codes you need for installation

I use to collect Living Dead Dolls. I know interesting right

I think mine was nvrmndthlbl or something like that because I always bought black label decks.
cool thread.

Mine was/is Lixx. It's just my old DJ name which I got when I use to spin at friends house parties back in the early 90's. A guy I use to know decided to mc for me on night and made some reference to my records as "hot licks". As I previously struggled to find a DJ name that didn't sound stupid (at the time everyone was DJ this or that) the proverbial lightbulb appeared over my head. I just kept it as my online handle.

Glad to see we don't only have Demon's Souls in common

Mine was Beetoe and I wonder why I haven't kept it here or on flickr... which reminds me I should change my handle.
Anyway beetoe because I was born and grew up in London where Roberto became for many friends not familiar with the tricky Italian pronounciation 'Beetoe'.
Still use it all the time, need to get it back as I really don't like Rudebeast that much (although it does remind me of a two headed bemon)

Mine just my first name kinda backward. ste pha ne / ne pha ste.
I've been using this since my teens, nefaste (nefast) means harmful...
I made a variation to nefasth to get that black-metal vibe

I made up a campaign in 1999 where I created a character and ran for the position of "Messiah" for the year 2000...performance art bs, my roots - think televangelist/politician...the whole Y2K thing was going on at the time so a lot of the posters and flyers and stuff I did involved the phrase "M2KCompliant."

I lost the election.

But, if I'm still around...I'll be running again in the year 2,999. My handle was/is a declaration of my candidacy. I want SB support, folks!

when the skullbrain board first popped up, i was thinking i was just going to be lurker
and 6 years later still using the same name, but i've spent thousands of hours reading and posting here.

hopefully i'm not as creepy IRL as the name sounds.

All of mine have bad jokes behind them. My current one is a joke based the idea of "bad online handles." Like when I was 15 you pretty much had to have something violent in it and then since you were never the only one to think of it you needed a number sequence so it HAD to be "1138" "138" "666" "69" or as went the more subtle route "6969". So Jeff in 1999 would have thought "Blooddrinker6969" was a legit and totally badass name, Jeff in 2006 (I think that's when I joined) saw the ironic humor behind it as a poke to 1999 Jeff. When the "change your handle to your real name" offer came up a few years back I asked but never received but I'm fine with it. It gets annoying explaining ironic humor over the internet, especially when there's so many people who actually think "Blooddrinker6969" is a really bad ass name and not just a joke. Wall of text DONE.

back in the day I used to throw MC battles and I always needed more names for the flyer. So i would make up all sorts of crazy names like.... Shark eye or Computer hair. When the flyers would come out all the MC's would be like who's Computerhair? I would be like, "He's from LA, he's a total beast, watch out for that guy".

Besides computerhair has a better ring than Bryan Turbett

Uh, my first handle was Blue. When I want to join a board I just want to join and not spend a lot of time thinking up a name. Blue was/is my favorite color and I also like it as a nickname (though no one in real life ever called me Blue!) - so Blue it was. I've had to add numbers to it at times, which I always hated doing. I think Blue was taken when I first came to SB though and I didn't feel like adding a number to it so I changed to my initials...with some wings or something like that bracketing them.

my first email/handle was thezeppelin8
had aol back in high school and i used to think led zeppelin was the be all end all of music.
8 is my favorite number.
by the ends of high school i started to get a bit annoyed with good ol' zep,
so i started to use my nickname as my handle.
Lalo is the spanish nickname for my middle name, eduardo.

My first handle, e-mail was skatan_69... Yeah, I like ska, satan, skateboarding, and well I was 15, so 69 was a given. I had that e-mail for way too long.
Later bc88 came along, my first and middle initial and 88 like IG-88. I love the War of Stars.
For Skullbrain, my first vinyl was Secret Base, so I went with Damaged Bryan to sound like Damaged Brain, that and my grandma used to spell my first name like Brain.

My friends have been calling me Frank Nitti or Nitti for short ever since I was a kid.I always add a y at the end since the other spelling is usually taken.

When I was first entering the information super highway - after not really having much at all to do with computers since the late eighties - I had to pick a handle for AOL. I started off all traditional -like (my name, my pets name, etc) but kept getting my choices spit back at me with that random string of numbers attached. Hated that. My then roomie and me then sat at the computer free-associating and typing in the results for almost an hour before the number-string curse was lifted.
That's when I became cokesacker.
Mommie never believed that it wasn't a drug thing, even though I explained that a coke sacker is the guy that feeds coal into fire to make machines go. I never mentioned to her that we got it from the ancient joke involving a cork soaker and a cock sucker...

Just googled cokesacker for the first time. Seems the modern world thinks it's dirty, too.

Mine came from videogames (DED), because I would die all the time... I guess I still do. Now I'm 30 and I have a two year old son, so it creeps me out. I wish I could change it but we have a Joe and a Joseph...... Maybe I'll be Joey!!?

1994: rubber007 (a girl in highschool said my head looked like an Eraser after i'd had a haircut.

1996: ilovecokelots (self explanatory hopefully, softdrink..)

1997: Darkness (loved the Marc Silvestri comic at the time

2003: Darky (Darkness is always fricking taken??)

My first handle, which I still use for paypal was

hch3psa:

h: henry
c: clarence
h: hampton
3: i'm the 3rd
ps: playstation
a: anime

yup

While attending college I worked at a restaurant where I picked up the nick name Johnny Cat by the kitchen staff. It was a pretty fun work environment…they always threw me birthday parties the day’s I worked and “meowed” out the windows each time I bussed tables on the patio (much to the surprise of the restaurant’s patrons). When I started to DJ, I shortened it to jcat, which is what my cfriends and stepson call me. It's made a decent online handle as well.

My first email account was ickykided, well because I was the icky kid when I was younger. I used that for awhile, still have just don't use it. Then started using kingslosecrowns, just thought it sounded cool.

I have no real idea of why I started using useless toys as a screen name.