Modern games that run on a potato machine (small gib added, Level 1+ basic SG) ENDED

I didn't feel you were offended or attacked by how I came about my username, because if someone was that would be kind of weird and mostly their problem. I was trying to ensure that you did not feel like I was attacking you with my posts.

Why "HisBrokenHeart"? Because I am male? Why does a username have to be a direct (or indirect) reference to oneself? How is HisBrokenHeart any more valid than HerBrokenHeart when it is not a reference to a specific person?

You seem to take the position that a username is tied to its user in a way that meaningfully explains something about them, like how your name means little rocks and how you consider yourself to be a rock, but not everyone's username reveals something they think about themselves. If you said what you did about your name and said that you had faced difficult obstacles in your life, would it be wrong for your name to be RockyRoad with a picture of the ice cream instead of a picture of say a rocky road?

And what counts as taking a username "seriously"? If I didn't take it seriously--if I were indifferent, presumably--then I wouldn't feel a need to change it.

What of people who choose a username after their favorite band but years later no longer listen to that band's music?

Or name themselves in part after a literary character for a book whose charm they outgrew?

What of young men who use pictures of attractive women they do not know as their avatar?

I still feel like the gulf here is your expectation of what a username should be, and I assure you that I am not the exception to a rule--though I may be uncommon--but that your expectations are limiting and inflexible.

It is precisely because I have more interest in my own username than most probably have in theirs that I have sometimes changed it on services where changing it is possible.

My earliest online experience was on IRC, where nicknames can be changed at any time. I mostly used the same nicknames because consistency matters a bit, but I did have more than one.

I was on AOL for quite a while (even after getting broadband cable from another ISP) because of a unique community and activity that did not and still does not exist elsewhere on the 'net. When AOL gave users the ability to use up to 7 sub-accounts, I began to often go onto a sub-account to create a new name, and then go back to my community. Sometimes I'd pretend I wasn't me for fun, but mostly it was about being clever in choosing a new name, getting into mischief with it, exploiting AOL's name system, or some other such thing. Several of us did it and very few people that were part of my community for a long period of time were known by a single username the whole time. Though the vast majority were pretty consistent and stable in their choice, and almost always have a defining username and thus a handle. In that way I am the very rare exception as by the end I had no defining handle. But it was pretty much standard in our community for everyone to know each other's first name so that became my only "identity" as time passed whereas for most others, it was a handle as well as a first name (sometimes with the former disambiguating the latter from another with the same name). My name is uncommon enough that it doesn't require disambiguation. So there's that. Anyway, it doesn't help that for whatever reason a person may "lose" their AOL account and thus have their original and preferred account name unavailable to them. Because during my AOL run I had several different accounts I could not have used the same name the entire time anyway.

On Steam there have been periods where I changed my profile name a bunch. When I was a mod on a L4D2 server and I had the ability to change my own name on the server--as well as that of others users--I had a lot of fun playing around with it, sometimes to the amusement (or annoyance) of others. It was part of how I admin'd and it made me distinct from the other admins. But I was just trying to have fun as we all played the same campaigns for the hundredth time.

As I too can be confused by frequent profile name changes that some people make, after deciding that I felt like playing around with my profile name a bunch after being "My Darling Clementine" for half a year after I finished TWD:S1, I first chose to go back to the most "handle" of my handles, and the one that best represents my avatar now as well as changing my avatar to this current image. And then I did nothing for a period of time to "stabilize". Then I fooled around with my profile name, knowing that anyone who is actually looking for me on their list can find my very distinctive avatar.

But I do have several "handles". Names I chose that were prominent and long-lived enough within certain communities in which I participated frequently over a long period of time to qualify as a handle. There have been more than a handful of them over the many years but I still know what name I used where for any place that was memorable, if I had a 'handle' there. Some of these handles were used in several places--others just once.

But usernames on random sites? I long ago broke the habit of signing up everywhere with the same username. Why? Because it just identifies you as the same person everywhere if your username is sufficiently unique enough (and if it isn't unique enough you have to vary it or use an alternate if it is taken). Using the same username everywhere makes it easier for online assholes to harass or target you (not that this has ever been a problem for me), for you to be traced back to activity from years earlier (not that I am worried about the feds coming for me), and easier to phish/exploit/hack your accounts when you use the same username/email/password combinations everywhere (not much of a concern when you only know 1% of your passwords, use MFA whenever it is available, and avoid the security backdoors that are application passwords).

So, like with AOL giving me the ability to change my name, I embraced being creative in my usernames when registering accounts online after I began to use a password (account) manager, instead of sticking to a handle by rote. Usually I try to quickly think up a username related to the site, but I have no special attachment to it most of the time (except perhaps a little bit if I really think it was a wonderful example of gee whiz look how clever this username is). If I become more invested in the community I may wish that I had a username that better reflects whom I want to present myself as, but 95% of the accounts you register for online don't even have a real community associated with them anyway (or you never get involved with it), so it's often a moot point.

If you don't want to call me HerBrokenHeart because you don't think it is sufficiently attached to me, that is fine. It wasn't my choice. fireworks was taken. So I chose HerBrokenHeart. But fireworks is a handle of mine, and my current Steam profile name. Quite generic, though.

Maybe I should go back to "For Sale: One Used Sex Machine" on Steam, as I was in fall/winter 2014. If nothing else, it engendered offers to what the sex machine was and how much it cost (it was the Queen of England's, and the price is a million dollars).