Choosing a username
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May 15, 2024
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One of the more difficult tasks in modern life is choosing a username for some newfangled digital system. Sure, it's not terribly significant. And yet the Hotmail email address you created in 1998 stuck around for a lot longer than you anticipated. You can never tell which website or app is gonna be the next "thing," so it's sort of important to choose a name that's relevant, meaningful, and not embarrassing.
I have a tendency to want to put some variation of my name (first or last or a combo) in everything. But this can get a little wordy, especially if firstname.lastname is taken so you have to go with firstname.middlename.lastname. Then every time you have to give your email address over the phone (yes this still happens in the year 2024), it's a whole thing.
Plus, the internet is sometimes a scary place, so you might not want your real name attached to everything. Or sometimes you just want to be anonymous. I think there's value in anonymity, for the sole reason that you can do a dumb thing and leave it in the past, instead of carrying it with you forever. (Side note -- kids these days should be allowed to make mistakes without having those mistakes potentially affect every future opportunity they ever have.)
A username without your name is kind of tricky, because it can be something you like, or an activity you enjoy, or it could be random and arbitrary. I think the more important aspect of this is: Will you be sharing this information with someone? Because you don't want your email on your resume to be something stupid like hikerguy42@aol. Or if you're connecting with a real-life friend on an app and you have to say your username out loud and it's something like "boiled_fruit_enjoyer" maybe that might be undesirable. Or maybe not. I'm not you.
The overarching issue is that, with an increasing population and the proliferation of internet access, the universe is running out of usernames. You used to be able to get a two-letter Twitter username (also Twitter used to be called Twitter). We're eventually moving to a world where your username is auto-generated and just a random combination of numbers and letters. Choose wisely while you still have the opportunity. #technology
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