For a long time I went by the name "Kurgan" as I've always been a fan of Highlander and I was terribly impressed with Clancy Brown in the role of the villain. However, as the Internet stopped being a secret among universities and research organizations, the username became a lot more popular and thus harder to guarantee it would be available. I tried "ghoti" but that was unreliable as well. Finally I attached "space" in front and thought it might prompt people to mistake it for "space ghost," the iconic cartoon superhero from Hanna-Barbera lately turned late night talk show host. Instead, most people mistook it for "space goat" and even one who read it as "space bughatti" which still has me scratching my head.
So it's not an exciting username, but it has the benefit of always being available when I want to register on a new website.
I used to do something similar, with a single username for everything, until I got sucked into a political argument with a right-wing troll on one particular forum and he (I assume) googled my username and started following me around other sites, essentially being as aggressive and offensive as he could to me and (worse) my friends. As he was many thousands of miles away I never felt physically threatened (though he did make threats, and managed to figure out my real name, home town and some details of my family), but it was a very unpleasant period. I now make a point of doing the exact opposite - the only time I use the same username twice is on sites where my real name is public, as there's not much point worrying about it on those!
I'd say to anyone who uses the same name on every site ( /u/jenjen1352 was another), be very careful.
(Edited, 'cos I apparently don't know how to give someone a "mention" in a comment)
It isn't very exciting.
For a long time I went by the name "Kurgan" as I've always been a fan of Highlander and I was terribly impressed with Clancy Brown in the role of the villain. However, as the Internet stopped being a secret among universities and research organizations, the username became a lot more popular and thus harder to guarantee it would be available. I tried "ghoti" but that was unreliable as well. Finally I attached "space" in front and thought it might prompt people to mistake it for "space ghost," the iconic cartoon superhero from Hanna-Barbera lately turned late night talk show host. Instead, most people mistook it for "space goat" and even one who read it as "space bughatti" which still has me scratching my head.
So it's not an exciting username, but it has the benefit of always being available when I want to register on a new website.
I used to do something similar, with a single username for everything, until I got sucked into a political argument with a right-wing troll on one particular forum and he (I assume) googled my username and started following me around other sites, essentially being as aggressive and offensive as he could to me and (worse) my friends. As he was many thousands of miles away I never felt physically threatened (though he did make threats, and managed to figure out my real name, home town and some details of my family), but it was a very unpleasant period. I now make a point of doing the exact opposite - the only time I use the same username twice is on sites where my real name is public, as there's not much point worrying about it on those!
I'd say to anyone who uses the same name on every site ( /u/jenjen1352 was another), be very careful.
(Edited, 'cos I apparently don't know how to give someone a "mention" in a comment)