HACKER Q&A
📣 ThePrankster

How do you choose your online usernames/handles?


How do you choose your online usernames/handles?


  👤 mindcrime Accepted Answer ✓
Pretty simple here: I'm a big Queensrÿche[0] fan, and have been ever since a friend introduced me to their absolutely mind-blowing Operation:Mindcrime[1][2] album.

The word "mindcrime" appears as a plot element in the OM story and it always stuck with me. When I got my first (dial up!) Internet account back in the mid 90's, I picked "mindcrime" as my username, and to this day I use it nearly everywhere. The few exceptions are places where somebody else had already grabbed the name. :-( In a few such cases (Slashdot, Reddit) I use a slight variation: "psykocrime".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensr%C3%BFche

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation:_Mindcrime

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLi46MAgxqc


👤 thematrixturtle
Use any of a dozen random online name generators. Pick ones that have no connection to your life. Rotate regularly.

👤 legrande
Bitwarden's username generator should suffice:

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/04/26/how-to-generate-unique-use...


👤 monkeybutton
It used to be excruciatingly hard. Now I just have a few themes I dip into and take a variation of.