Roundtable Discussion: AIM Screen Names

If you haven’t realized it already, I’ve got a tech/life spoiler alert for you. Google has taken over the world. Never has this been more apparent than last week when Gmail lost functionality across the country for anywhere between 20 minutes to a few hours. Across the U.S. confounded Americans were at a loss with the surprise disconnect from not only their e-mail service, but also their main source of office time distraction/connection with their more interesting friends.

Yes, I’m speaking of G-Chat. So I decided for this roundtable to take us back to a simpler time, a time of elaborate emoticons, a period where the emergence of nonsensical abbreviations such as lol, afk, and a/s/l emerged, and more horrific was this a time of aLtErNaTiNg CaSeS for no apparent reason.

This week for our staff roundtable discussion, I asked our team to provide their AOL Instant Messenger aka AIM Screen Names, and the reasoning behind those gems. Hilarity ensued.

Roundtable Discussion!

Tristan Chan

“Triste252000 – some girl I went to school with nicknamed me Triste because I was the anti sad and why does any middle schooler do anything? Because of a girl. My other screen name was a tad more creative: secretaznchan”

Lizzie Bourque

“ShrlyTemple56 – because I am a musical theatre nerd and she always had 56 pin curls in her hair because it was good luck. “

Erin Russell

“Mine was so lame – Briesweety. I made my screen name when I was 11 right after we got our dog, a Bichon named Brie. And I was also very anti-numbers in my handles and this one was unique. Needless to say, I got a lot of (unsolicited, of course) messages from spammy porno sites.
I later on became DuchessErin because I thought that a Duchess was the best royal title: not much responsibility but still all of the riches and fabulous parties/villas/jewels.”

Drew Troller

“BikeBoy35 – because I liked riding my bike, I was a boy, and my jersey number in lacrosse was 35.
Later on, when I felt I had grown up and matured, I changed it to WerdTroll – because Werd is Drew spelled backwards, and Troll is the first syllable of Troller, and also I thought I was clever.”

Phil Joyce

“Philiptheredhead for obvious reasons. It has stuck with me a long time.”

Sarah Hargis

“I never had AOL IM, but I was ruebela on IRC. After the disease…which is also one of my favorite Smoking Popes songs. “

Laura Mego

“Mine was RocksDramaChick: Rocks
was short for Shamrocks, the lamest school mascot ever, drama because I was (ok, still am) a total theatre nerd, and chick because I guess I was afraid people wouldn’t know I was a girl? Of course, there were the required “inspirational” quotes in my profile in hot pink and the font Curlz MT because duh…13 year old girl.”

Michelle Andriano

“So you know, I had two. In junior high I was LuvPeace17 and my best friend at the time was PeaceLuv18…don’t ask apparently we were hippies that didn’t like spelling correctly. Our birthdays were a day apart, the 17th and 18th… In high school, I realized that name was super dumb and just went with my nickname Chellebelle217…again numerically for my birthday…which just so happens to be 3 weeks from today! Happy Monday”

Lilly Sue

“Hoopsta33 because I was a baller and my number was 33!! Lol It was my email as well and for some reason it got so much spam like ‘enlarge penis size’ Started it when I was 12/13 and the email still exists with probably even more enticing offers now”

Aaron Ellis

“WildBKelso3000

If you’ll allow me to explain…

One of my favorite movies growing up was 1941, Steven Spielberg’s only flop, which starred John Belushi as a drunken Army Air Force pilot named Captain Wild Bill Kelso:

Unfortunately, That 70s Show was also popular at the time, so everyone thought it had something to do with Ashton Kutcher.

I did have WildBKelso, but lost the password at some point, so naturally I registered WildBKelso3000 because it was already the year 2000.”

Joshua Kan

“WonTonKan
Parents owned a Chinese restaurant, Won Tons are delicious, and it rhymes with my last name.
Still using it for usernames, don’t mess with a good thing. “

Nathan Tapp

God. I went through so many…

Molokai86 because I was born in Hawaii in 86.
MrBigglesworth because Austin Powers was amazing.
OompahLoompah13 because I was weird. And I was 13 when I made this.
FurbyFromHeck because it was also my Xanga name. And Furbies were scary.
And, finally, HerrTamburinMann because I needed a change when I went to college and Gchat didn’t really exist. And Bob Dylan is awesome. And it sounds great in German.

Alex Cadice

“SlyGuy5388 and SweetBeat88. It was my understanding that girls enjoyed word play, and in my mind, that meant rhyming… I eventually went through a Godfather/Austin Powers Goldmember phase and upgraded to “godfasha20.” Clearly, it all went to plan.”

Andy Hagemann

“Want2BArmy, because my cousin was at West Point and I was into the whole camo thing. Needless to say, I didn’t join the army…”

Spencer Mapes

“SlowBlader08, because in middle school I thought snowblading was the shit and I was a badass for doing it, and I was going to graduate in 2008. I now know snowboarding kicks the pants off of blading but, it can still be fun to bust them out every now and again. “

Lauren Hoff

“Spaztastical138. I really have no idea why, but I think it may explain itself

When I needed a less 11 year old screen name, I went with TrojanSftball39, please I played softball, #39, for the Thornton Trojans. “

Ellie Thompson

“Dolphingirl179, because I loved dolphins that much. I chose 179 because 0 through 178 were already taken. “

Adam Solarz

“GreenBaySucks85

Because it does. Go Bears. “

Marie DeAeth

“I really can’t remember it entirely, but I’m fairly certain it had the word “fairy” in it.
(hangs head in shame)”

Becca Gassman

“[email protected]….
I really liked the band good charlotte and was obsessed with benji. Haha.”

Brad Hartsock

“On AIM I was hitmanhartsock after Brett “The Hitman” Hart cause wrestling was awesome. On ICQ though I was phalange. There’s really no possible explanation.”

Jason Behler

“I am an old man, an old man who was in college when AIM became popular, and thus never had a handle. You kids and your new-fangled technologies. “

Justin Vicroy

“I, like Jason, am an old man. My parents didn’t get internet until I left for college. I signed up for either AIM or YahooChat, but didn’t use it much. I was much too worried about downloading music from Napster; back when it would take all night to download 5 songs. You other old PDers remember that? “

Drew Davis

“I lost months of my life waiting for Napster downloads to finish. There is no disappointment greater than waiting for 5 hours for “we’re not gonna take it” by twisted sister to download only to see it stall and fail at 98%.”

Andrew Sharp

“I was Ziggyplayguitar2 – I was a huge David Bowie fan back in the day (Labyrinth was before my time , but I think I knew how awesome it was”

Erin Horn

“Munchkin2000 – because I was a small person from Kansas (aka Wizard of Oz reference) in the year 2000 (and still am 14 years later.)

My older sister’s was way more embarrassing. Blizz626 – because her first celebrity crush/obsession was Leonardo Dicaprio because of Titanic (obviously.) Leo’s pet lizard’s name was Blizz. (See here for confirmation: http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/surprising-facts-making-8216-titanic-8217-203100135.html) She always thought she was being sneaky and nobody knew the true meaning of her screenname – but I knew and now I’m sharing it with all the internet! (bwhahaha)”

Kyle Buchanan

“buchananboy0511
Why….Buchanan was my last name+ nickname in some fashion, I was a boy at that time (at least at heart), 05 was going to be my expected graduation year, and 11 was my soccer number. Simply as that!!”