Fun stories.

I was The Dark One in the late eighties when I was calling in on a late night techno show on community radio...

On the first MUDs, in the mid-nineties, I was Spoon or Shrimp. No real reason. I guess it was absurd.

I was then both camiondepompier (firetruck) because it was long enough that I didn't have to tag numbers to it and petitetoilonrouge (little red spur?) for the same reason. Petitetoilonrouge comes from a great comic book parody of little red riding hood where the main character is a young soviet soldier in Afghanistan bringing opium to a mujahidin. I had a store called camiondepompier, which I sold, so petitetoilonrouge it is (or étoile (star) on the rare occasions when I still dj).

Good stories so far. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with a weird story behind their name... And I realize that after a while, the in-joke stops being funny and the novelty wears off and your user name just becomes your name, but the stories behind them are interesting for sure for people who have never heard them. So keep them coming.

My first message board name, before skullbrain was muton...so I'm safe.

For some reason my first ebay name in 1999 was weird, but I still have it 12 years later.

i essentially have thought of a new screen name with most every account since 2001, which is something that came with the rapid changes of adolescence. my first one was bksnep11@aol.com, aka N.E.P. the 11 year old who likes books. then i had ones related to modest mouse, outkast and other bands because i was an indie rock tool, then i just started making shit up that sounded cool. i could track it all with a graph and that would probably be fascinating. it essentially works the same way with passwords, which will probably carry all of my online identities to the grave. "astronate" seems to be sticking these days but it unfortunately postdates signing up on sb.

my first one was a blusher

'ninjarobotboy' - with age i've learnt that mashing up individually great things does not make for one greater thing. (lobster pizza anyone?)

i had it as my personal email for years. I landed up getting a writing job for a high-profile and very-corporate sports organization. The boss told me later down the line that when they were discussing hiring me the big cheese looked over my resume (and email address) and said:

"ninjarobotboy huh...are we sure about this guy?"

strange to think a name can cause such immediate judgement.

My first handle was Winu.

Probably used it around 2000-2001? Its my Burmese nickname.

in 1998 i was trying to make my AOL screen name... "michaeljackson" and "humanmilk" were taken, so "rhinomilk" it was. I've stayed pretty consistent with everything I've ever signed up for - except when I wanted to sell my 2nd row Dave Matthews Band tickets on ebay (which was before paypal, so I sold it through escrow), and I didn't think people would take "rhinomilk" seriously, so I am not "rhinomilk" on ebay. Anyways, sort of neat not changing anything over the years now that I am a celebrity who has built an empire over a single name.

Great thread.

Ha ha. from the saturday night live sketch! To this day when i try and say corksoaker i hear an old italian man pronouncing it in my head

I'm still using my emabarrasing nickname I've had for nearly twenty years....

My original email or online handle was superlame it was taker565@aol.com... i used it for alot of old boards like DC comics and so bummed by it now although i still love the undertaker it was just kinda silly...
I use Coma21 cause it was my old graffitti handle from back when i lived out east and down here in NM when i finally stopped tagging i figured why let it go to waste and still use it now. so its one of those things where im used to being refered to it as a nickname.

When I signed up I had nothing but shoes in the head, so when thinking of a handle thats where I went. My favorite shoes are the Jordan 3's, favorite color way of all time is the true blue version- hence trueadrn. I thought about using my full name and a space but I like it better this way.

P.S. I love to necropost.

Necropost! seriously made my day best term ever!

My first online handle came about from early online FPS's. It was BigJimS1ade, from the skit in Kentucky Fried Movie. It was also my competing name in actual shooting competitions. Daimyo came soon after from my life long obsession with traditional Japanese sword fighting.

man when i was in 5th grade my first screen name was vampslayer24- i was obsessed with sarah michelle gellar and wanted to be on buffy so bad... those times ended quickly.

My nickname to EVERYONE who knows me in Australia is MattyBoombatty. I've met Jason Mewes, even HE called me MattyBoombatty without giving me any shit about it because I got it from "mallrats" when Jay says "I guarantee you a fattyboombatty blunt...". For some reason after I made Smash Tokyo Toys everyone o/s decided to call me "Smash" which gave me the irrits.
Now I'm 40 I think its kind of silly but I call people by their street names even tho I know their real names...like I call Sucklord "Sucklord" when I know his real name because I know us guys want to be called by our street names the same way a kid wants to be called by his pretend superhero name....just not when there's chicks around.

I have been using Circa 77 or C77 and PF77 for years now, when I started freelancing I needed a name (well I thought I did), I remember seeing the Unbroken 7" which had 'Unbroken Circa 77' on one side and since I was born in 77 it kind of stayed with me since 1995, man that makes me feel old

And still love that record as well

First online handle was "maldoror," the name of the undying character in the great surreal book "Les Chants de Maldoror" by Lautréamont. I know, very pretentious (but ya gotta read the book!) For a short time I used "melmoth," from "Melmoth the Wanderer," a bizarre gothic novel which inspired parts of "Maldoror."

After that I used "nopalito" for awhile. As most probably know nopalitos are marinated strips of edible opuntia cactus pads used in Mexican cooking. I used to be a total freak for cacti and succulents. Helped friends build a greenhouse for them, had an enormous collection of my own, the whole bit. "Nopal" is an Aztec word for a type of edible "prickly pear" cactus. Later I switched to the also-Aztec "xoconostle" which is the fruit of a type of opunita, also edible. It has a sweet-and-sour taste. Not really the enthusiast I used to be. I switched to "Dean" here some years back here at Skullbrain because "xoconostle" is a little cumbersome and difficult to pronounce for we English speakers. Apologies to those who already know this story but what the heck ... necroposting is fun!

One of my first real online handles was rusty. I had a local ISP at the time named rust.net, and an admin on a chat program (The Palace) that I used at the time saw that and deemed me rusty. Obviously, I grew to think that it's kind of a dumb name, not to mention very unoriginal, so I changed it to a lot of different spellings over the years. But it's dead to me.

But wait, it gets more embarrassing -- Sometime in the mid-late-90s, I went by shotgun.messiah, an incredibly shitty band that I never really listened to, but I liked the name a lot. I was also a really big KMFDM / Tim Skold fan at the time, so that's mostly where it came from. Then I realized that it just reeks of angsty teenager a la Trench Coat Mafia, so it didn't last long and was only ever used on one message board and newsgroups (remember those?).

I posted a link to a particular track in the names thread but here's a little more explanation -- Bansheebot is a character from Buckethead's first solo album Bucketheadland. It's basically a narrative / concept album about a family that gets chosen to visit a theme park before it opens. Bansheebot is one of the villains that Buckethead faces along the way. When my young ears heard this in the early 90s (there's lots of experimental shit, Johnny Sokko samples, horror movie references, awesome shredding), I was blown away and am still a huge Big B fan to this day. I haven't been keeping up with a lot of his recent work, but I've noticed that with many artists / genres, I go in and out of listening to it, so I'm sure I'll catch up soon.

Most recently, evylwyzyrd. Because I'm an evil wizard, no doi.

When I was younger I just wanted "to be on" Sarah Michelle Gellar so bad. To this day, I still wouldn't mind

gorgor94 was my first handle, thomafisk is the usual (derived from my first name thomas and lutefisk) Waiting... is used only here on the brain

There are still folks I met in the 90s that affectionately call me Wappy.

J053PH

53 as in EC, the fifth and third letter of the alphabet (east coast).

For some reason whenever I played any games where you could name a character I was always tonik. So anything online became tonik,tonik420 (used to smoke a lot ) or tonik5623 (my respective football/baseball numbers growing up). When I joined that other board a few years back I ended up with g_money as a nod to people calling me that at work. I guess living and growing up in and around Newark made all the suburban kids think I deserved the name? And came here and Greg was gone so g_money stays. I will always use tonik when naming a game character though.

If I'm not mistaken, my first SN on AOL was "ShenlongLegend"

I was a big DBZ fan...