Blogs seem to be the only places where you can have an internet moniker anymore . like mem or duh or cloud-light. Then again you can do this only on personal blogs.
Earlier these names were everywhere- emails, chat identities. Almost everyone when they first discover the internet decides to shed their staid name that identifies their country, the religion, and gender and decides to pick one that indicates their level of 1. horniness 2. geekiness 3. well- readness 4. well listenedness .
We are presented with a world where we can maintain total anonymity, allowing us to present ourselves the way we want to appear. Nobody can even see you. You can be anyone -unique and brilliant. Yet you have - studboy5467 (5466 people probably already have that name). Men will pick something that has something to do with sex and women will pick something thats cute.
I have been equally guilty - I convinced one friend to be sexbomb on a chatforum. Later I made it sound as if this was a huge clever scam and I had realized the ridiculousness of it all along and had conned my naive friend into accepting the name. In truth, I thought it was a kickass name.
Then there is the second level of maturity where you spurn names like studboy and sexbomb and pick something that reveals something about you- your penchant for music about death ,your love for obscure literature, you knowledge of some pop culture trivia, your wonderful skills in working our anagrams.
Then you grow up and discover your grandma wants to email you and that your boss thinks star wars is stupid- so now you have to generate a firstname.lastname@ soandso.com account. No matter this is not the account you use for work. You have realized that you will interact with family online and that internet is not the domain of the young anymore. You will also realise that while your name stays comfortingly stable, your love for bands, obscure literature, and things that make you go wow change through the years. Soon there wont even be things that make you go wow and even when you do find things that make you go wow - making them a part of your identity has become so lame.
Even when you want to maintain anonymity, like say in a personal blog, - you venture carefully picking names like mem and em and me and she and he. Sigh how boring have we become.
