Last month, we asked our friends to tell us how they came up with their earliest screen names.
These are their sToRiEs:
"I really liked playing cards as a child. It was a bit of an odd obsession, as I wasn't really into playing card games. (Plus, I thought gambling was the worst thing a human could do.) I just liked the designs of cards and had a small collection of them. I even went as the Ace of Hearts for Halloween one year.
"eca300 is me flipping around 'ace' and adding my street number to it."
—Jason S.
"My dad was responsible for the family's first set of screen names since we were just kids and the free trial of dial-up on CD-ROM was addressed to him personally.
"For some reason he thought that we needed to identify which country we were from (since it was the World Wide Web) so our first screen names followed the format of our first names, last initial, and country: MarcRUSA, BenRUSA, and CatherineRUSA. I'd love to make fun of him for his lack of imagination, but my second handle (which I got to create) was so much worse: BenDaMan23.
—Ben R.
"KimFisdefpunk4u. Because I thought I was definitely punk. (I was not.)"
—Kim F.
"xTaKiNgXbLiNkXtHuRsDaYx. Because it was a combination of some of my favorite pop-punk bands at the time and WrItInG lIkE tHiS wAs SuPeR KeWl."
—Clark M.
"Mine was oHazardousSporko because I thought sporks were qUiRkY and I had recently found out that there were only four words in the English language that ended with –dous (which is just not true). I added the bracket Os because 'HazardousSpork' was already taken and I thought bracket Xs were trashy."
—Emily S.
"Mine was mrpoop81 because I thought poop was funny [and my birthday is the 18th (backwards = 81)]. Tbh...I still think it's funny."
—Dan T.
"My screen name was snowis4boards because I had snowboarded down someone's driveway, like, one time, but felt as if that qualified me as a dope snowboarder girl. I wanted to be a tomboy and one of the guys so I thought a sport screen name would make me seem cool. Mostly people made fun of me."
—Colleen S.
"My first one was actually priyaminhas1 because my sensible older cousin set it up for me. BUT once I took control of my own personal brand I changed it to lilbabyspice. Not because of my obsession with the '90s girl group (which would make sense, I guess) but because I had a guinea pig named Spice, and he was...lil. I genuinely remember thinking long and hard about it."
—Priya M.
"Mine was Hlmaker09. It stood for 'hell maker' because I wanted the internet to think of me as a v metal person. Unfortunately, the capital H and lowercase L looked like the word 'hi.' So my early gamer chatrooms referred to me as Hi-maker, which is not metal at all."
—Jake T.
"VGG86. It stood for 'very good girl,' and then the year I was born. It's disgusting."
—Hannah L.
"Mine was JoshManCompKid.
"Even as a (comp) kid, I thought that having numbers attached to screen names was tasteless — though, unfortunately, that didn't stop me from using smileydude52 when I was in middle school — so I sought to devise an SN that was uniquely ~me~ enough that I wouldn't have to use them. From there, breaking down the selection of those four words is quite simple, really:
1. My name is Josh.
2. JoshBoy sounds upsetting, and I considered myself mature for my age.
3. Comp, or as it's more widely known, Computer, was an obvious choice because I loved computer games and was a big loser.
4. In befuddling contrast to point no. 2, here I admitted that I was actually a kid. Whatever. I'm a complex guy."
—Josh F.
"SpunkyMonkey404. I had this one when I was age 15. The boy I was CrUsHiN oN in high school called me a spunky monkey, which now sounds gross, I realize. At the time I wore the nickname like a medal. A badge of honor."
—Kristin R.
"Oh dear. Mine was seymour.the.turtle. How I got people to add me with that I have no idea. But the story behind it is just as stupid.
"When I was nine or 10, my cousins and I decided we should become tattoo artists. Using only traditional Samoan tattoo tools, such as a wooden stick and a tortoise shell comb, I gave myself a tattoo of a giant turtle on my left calf. I decided to name it Seymour."
—Edwin H.
"My very first was CaseySCheer because my middle initial is S. I was a cheerleader so I thought using Cheer instead of my last name was clever.
"Another screen name I tried out, but didn't stick, was KomodoCline because my guy friends told me I looked like a lizard and briefly called me Komodo for a year in high school."
—Casey C.
"One of my early screen names was BrainFreezeCat which I chose because I liked cats and I thought brain freezes were a weird phenomenon and I wanted to be known as weird."
—Faye K.
You've upgraded your screen name. See how Windows 10 has upgraded at Windows.com — and feel free to share the story behind your s/n below!
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