A Rose by any other name. - why did you pick your QC name and avatar?

Idea
#1

I have noticed a lot of new names in the Circle recently. As the pandemic has more and more people sitting at home it looks like we all have a lot more time on our hands.

To that end, I am curious to get to know everyone a little better. One of the things I have consistently been intrigued by is the usernames that people select. Some just go by their first names, however others (such as myself) choose a completely different name to represent us. So why did you choose the name you did? What does it mean? More importantly, what does it mean to you?

For me, the name “Mythfortune” was selected a long time ago when I started interacting on the Bulletin Board Services that were the early Internet. I didnt know what I was doing, and I needed to create a “name” I would use to log in. As I had recently started reading Robert Asprin’s “Myth Adventures” series, I for some reason chose “Mythfortune”. I did not realize at the time that the name would be how people would address me online. Within the BBS people simply called me “Myth”, and I found I really enjoyed the nickname. So my online persona has been Mythfortune ever since.

Ironically many years later Robert Asprin would actually write a book called “Myth-Fortunes”. I should sue, but I guess I can be the bigger man and let him have the title. :slight_smile:

How about anyone else? Any stories you care to share while we are all locked in at home?

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General Community Guidelines
#2

I’m almost sure that everyone here would love to participate, but no one wants to be first. So I’m going to volunteer and break the ice, hoping that others will follow.

I am glad and grateful that today we no longer have to rely solely on the legacy media to find interesting and enlightening information. Once you manage to find good, trustworthy sources (a not unimportant condition), you are certainly better off than relying on the mainstream media, which all too often see their clients as mere children who need to be educated and guided by their superior journalist nannies. Therefore, BeyondMedia seemed to be a suitable choice as username.

Another association was that when I see people advocating policies that have highly destructive side effects on society, my first reaction is: “Why anyone in their right mind would want that is beyond me .” As I have had that reaction more and more frequently in recent years, this contributed to my decision.

So that was my story. What about you others, newbies or veterans? I’d love to hear your stories, too. :slight_smile:

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#3

I’ll chip in too. You probably know that Australians are famous for shortening words. Of course shortening Australia to Aus looks silly on paper, and Americans would probably pronounce it as “oss”. So we shorten Australia to Oz, which gives it an appearance of being a fairyland. It’s not for nothing that some people call Sydney “Emerald City”.

I also have two other screen names for other fora. One is “Toryhere” which is the sort of thing I image a sort of Buffton Tuffton character saying when asked about his political views.

On another forum where people talk a lot about being liberals or classical liberals, I decided that I couldn’t really regard myself as a classical liberal. For a while I thought I was a baroque liberal, but in the end settled for Rococo Liberal.

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#4

I chose to just use my name because I started commenting on Quillette after shutting down a Facebook profile with an alias I had grown tired of.

An ex-boyfriend made the Facebook profile without my knowledge years ago to post pictures of me and rile up other middle age men (including frequent hours-long conversations pretending to be me, jeopardizing people’s marriages!). When I found out about this “modeling” profile, I took ownership of the account, and mostly used it to get into heated political debates with the local photographers, models, and artists my ex had amassed on the friends list.

During the Kavanaugh confirmation battle, how vicious my friends had become in their wokeness became too clear to me, so I dumped the account. I wanted to comment somewhere though, so when I started to explore Quillette’s comment section. Rather than come up with a new alias, I chose to be simply and honestly me. It would just have to be too bad for all the other Stephanies :stuck_out_tongue:.

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#5

On QC, I began by using my first name & initial, but then changed to castlebay (for anonymity). Scottish ancestors in a long line, most from the Isle of Barra (cleared from the Highlands generations ago), and a fondness for the memories of my childhood country life prompted the username I chose. Nostalgia for simpler times I guess. :smirk:

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#6

My handle is one I use, and it has made people very curious across the years. I have told a number of stories about where it came from, too.

This is the true one.

After college, I made two email accounts, way back in the Earthlink days. 1 used a variant of my name, and the other one used my initials, the number two to indicate it was my second account, and mag to indicate that it was my spam magnet account and it was what I was going to be using when I was corresponding with those I might expect spam from, like a whole bunch of business is. So I started using that as my handle online as well, and have kept that up through grad school, twice, and to the present day. I am not, of course, still on EarthLink.

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#7

In the early days of the internet, I needed an email account. It was hotmail, yahoo, or AOL.

I prepped and tried a few things, but my name/initials were too common, and the nicknames I’d accrued over the years were likewise absorbed. Didn’t want a random number string. I then started randomly combining elements from my list in irritation until one was accepted. Then I read what it was, laughed because I was on-fire irritated, and kept it.

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#8

So you’re saying that you use the username that you have designated for correspondence with those from whom you might expect spam to communicate with us ?!?

:slight_smile:

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#9

heh, I found that amusing as well. Although honestly I love his explanation. I had kind of assumed “2mag” to be a tongue in cheek reference to the US second amendment.

Nope, it was about spam :slight_smile:

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#10

Have you seen some of the nonsense that gets posted from time to time?

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#11

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it!

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#12

Mine is a bit more prosaic than the responses above. Tidy refers to my love of all things Welsh, and Prepster is one of the ironic names my wife gave me. Ironic in the first instance because while I lack the requisite pedigree, my appearance and manner could be described as “preppy.” Ironic in the second instance because of my (mentioned-elsewhere) aspiration to return to the country and adopt the country bumpkin ethos.

The moniker is necessary because I have a rather distinctive name - so far as I’m aware, there’s only one of me in my city - and my right of centre opinions present, at present, a liability.

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#13

I’m not too creative. My usernames are either associated with my name and surname, or with the fact that I am a fan of Spanish football (don’t use the word “soccer”, please!). The latter is easy to guess by looking at my profile picture.

Sorry for this UPD, but one of the reasons for my passion for football is how straightforwardly football fans express their feelings!
realkid

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#14

My name is simple acronym, not exactly clever but chosen for privacy and anonymity. I work in a hyper-woke environment at a university - something which draws me to the open debate here on this site, but also makes posting under my own name a bit hazardous (as sad as that is to admit, and as cowardly as that makes me feel). I used to enjoy the university environment precisely because it offered a space for vigorous and open-ended discussion of contentious issues. Now that it has become so pious and restrictive, and so tightly policed by the vindictive and the righteous, I’m hoping to recover a bit of that same old feeling in places like these.

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#15

My sympathies. I am glad I am out of research, and that’s one of the reasons why.

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#16

So if a lady tries to discuss your love of soccer, you’ll soccer?

It fits with the straightforward approach…

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#17

Been there. I allowed myself to be convinced once to go the steady employee route and ended up at a local university - it didn’t last long. An IT manager once asked for my feedback about some “agile transformation” language he wanted to use in team meetings. Language to the effect that “those that don’t get with the program better get with the program, or else, for the good of the collective” and “naysayers will be identified and dealt with” he was (I believe) genuinely shocked when I told him such statements were collectivist and I would have no truck with them. I got a nice severance out of that place :slight_smile:

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#18

Honestly, this is a lot easier than you think.

If my wife asks me to do something when I’m watching football, I immediately respond to her request. This is by default.
Perhaps that is why she respects this weakness of mine and doesn’t bothers me when I’m watching football. Moreover, if I forgot to do something for her, and now there is football, she tells me: “Don’t be distracted, you are watching a football game”. It’s not that easy to convince her that this game is not at all important to me :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m absolutely not exaggerating.

If lady knows she always first, she is much more indulgent.

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#19

I am not a sports fan, but that still sounds like true love to me.

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#20

I’m not a real Rev! I set up an Instagram account a couple of years ago to try and get some followers interested in a novel I was going to publish. My friend who set it up for me had read an early draft and he advised me not to use my real name in case any religious folks were so upset they might want to kill me. Since the book was aimed at atheists (like myself) and asked
“what would it take for you to believe in God”
I thought Rev. C Darwin was appropriate.

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