Internet usernames are a wonderful slice of what makes us human. Some people just choose whatever generic tag a system may spit out. Others may choose something close to them. The online name I’ve had since 2005 is Neonspinnazz. Why? Because when I was a kid, I really loved the idea of spinner wheels with neon lights in them. I love seeing what Autopian readers come up with.
Thomas wrote about how proximity keys killed the brilliance of BMW’s self-charging keys. Angry Bob shows some, uh, frustration with proximity keys:
The first time I drove a car with a proximity key, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to start the damn thing.
My ’98 BMW has the inductive charging key, and it still works! It’s probably the only original part that still does!
Cheap Bastard:
“The first time I drove a car with a proximity key, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to start the damn thing.”
And how did that make you feel Bob?
Jason wrote a Pit Stop wondering about who drove the Peugeot in the Dukes of Hazzard. Rob Stercraw has a fun twist on character names:
Beau and Luc Duc.
Matt Hardigree wrote a Morning Dump about the car deals you might get before Christmas. GhosnInABox got me to do one of those nervous chuckles:
The tariffs our government put on giant red bows really kills Lexus dealers around the holidays.
Finally, Jason wrote a funny Cold Start about the Renault Dauphine. Canopysaurus:
If Renault had established a factory in South Florida back then, would these cars have been called Miami Dauphines?
Have a great weekend, everyone.
I stole my username from a 1970’s SNL character who I loved. It was either that or Frank Zappa, another favorite of mine (who wrote such classics as “Penguin in Bondage”. “Dog Breath, Dental Floss and Flatulent Kazoos,” and “St. Alphonsus Pancake Breakfast” (which includes my all time favorite lyric: “Watch Out Where The Huskies Go, Don’t You Eat That Yellow Snow”). I physically quite resembled both back in the day; today, not so much.
I stole my username from the license plate of another Viper owner.
This place, and the Discord, are the only places I use this one though.
EXL500 is a portmanteau of Fireball XL5 and Galaxie 500XL. It goes back to the inception of email.
Oh, and my first initial is E.
CUlater struck me as a nice multi meaning username – a cheerful parting, a not so cheerful one when leaving the line with the advantage 😉 , but mostly it’s me all these years later after graduating from Clemson.
Funny enough, the University of Colorado goes by “CU,” and a common joke for skipping class is “gone skiing, CU later.”
I must admit to some internal debate as I have recently been considering a car with 300hp. If I buy it, do I need to change my username? Or is 300hp considered slow-enough in this current car climate?
People are so disappointed to find out that my real name is Satan’s Bongwater.
That was my grandmother’s name!
In most of the online world I am the unimaginative first letter of firstname then last name. Here I am ProudLuddite which I am kind of fond of. How am I Proud Luddite, let me count the ways…My daily driver is 25 years old and has all the tech and safety and convenience features I will ever need. I don’t need a brain in my appliances, most (certainly not all) of my tools are hand tools, I even like carburators.
“My daily driver is 25 years old and has all the tech and safety and convenience features I will ever need.”
Well my ProudLuddite you’re not going to get any points with a car like that!…
…because it has coil-on-plug ignition…
Oh forget it.
There’s a number of regional significance that almost all of us from back home ended up using in our handles and usernames. When I joined the old site it was already taken so I went with the binary version.
I named myself after what was then my most recent vintage camera purchase- an Anscoflex II.
back when I was on the old Snopes message board I had what was my least favorite username, which was “Roadsterboy” because a then coworker called me that cause I was driving around in my first Miata then. I hadn’t planned on being active there for long but ended up participating for a while and it stuck. That was in the early 2000’s
I wasted an few excellent names on throwaway accounts. I shoulda used “Junkie Cosmonaut” here but obviously didn’t.
When it came time to pick a username for this place, I just wasn’t feeling very creative. I am Matt, and I’m around Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is a great place to be around.
I seem to have used my real name, could be that midwest nonchalance or maybe ego. I’m from around MKE afterall.
Absolutely!
I’ve had mainly 2 usernames that were fairly abstract so usually can get them on whatever system, and fuzzy we-is is actually fuzzy Weis, my Grandfather was a dirt track racer before he married and had 6 kids and Fuzzy was his nickname, it fits me cause we have lots of pets that shed so fuzzy we-is.
Not to date myself too much(too late) but back in the day I would try to get my username email on every new ISP that came out, hotmail, msn, live, bluelight(Kmart), disney, netzero, yahoo. Nowadays I’m trying to consolidate down to just gmail.
This actually isn’t my “most-of-the-internet” default username. I just made this one for here, specifically. Glad I got to it first.
We’re supposed to be using usernames?
Umm… I didn’t know that either
What’s a username?
My first name is Anthony, but when I was a kid, I went by Tony.
However, in first grade, an nee boy appeared at my small school. His name was also Anthony and went by Tony. To avoid confusion, my teacher declared that since his last name made him come before me on the roll, he would be Tony 1 and I would be Tony 2.
Well, as any child knows, 2 is ALWAYS associated with poop. There was NO WAY I was gonna be Tony Poop, so I switched to Anthony.
To this day, when someone learns my name, they almost always ask “Are you a Tony or an Anthony.”
I am not a Tony, and at one point, that was my username. But then I lost the account somehow, so I became StillNotATony.
I feel your pain, and wish that people would ask if I prefer Anthony or Tony – I’ve even had some idiots argue the point with me.
My dad was also a Tony (as was his dad), which overall wasn’t much a thing until he referred one of his clients to me while he was also still consulting with them. On top of that, he kept using “Jr.” throughout life, while I dropped the Roman numeral as soon as I could since it just sounds pretentious when you don’t have a British last name. Net result was that for the decade or so that our careers overlapped, phone receptionists would frequently ask if I was Big Tony or Little Tony.
When I was playing adult rec league soccer we had 3 Jeff’s on the team, all in the backfield. So, there was Big Jeff, Little Jeff (me), and Orr, which happened to be a last name, so it worked.
“‘E’s got computer gubbins in his head, like” from a panel in an obscure comic called Two-Step. Appropriate, I guess, that it’s about a guy who shags cars to death.
The fancy Dauphine was named the Florida already. Sort of Renaults version of a Karman Ghia.
COTD!
I love this place.
That was brilliant. Thanks for the laugh.
Back when the commenting system here changed my username back to my real name, I never changed it back. Too lazy I guess. But everywhere else in the world from Audizine, to VWVortex to The Car Lounge, to GTPlanet, YouTube, Twitch, whatever, I still go by CoolJetta3. That name originated in the AOL chatroom days and has stuck with me since.
My AOL username lives on as well. Not being a creative sort, I used it when I got my gmail account waaaaay back when that first debuted. kevinr1916. Got it when I went to law school, as only CS students were allowed to have university e-mail accounts.
I was actually the second student at my undergraduate school to get an e-mail account back in the dawn of time. im10002@maine.me.edu.
Same here with the “too lazy to change it back”. Although my name might as well be John Doe.
Mine came from an old girlfriend from 50 years ago.
Apparently “Darkside of my nut sack” was already taken when I signed up here though.
Enough said…
did not need that image of your darkened nut sack side put in my head. Is your nut sack dark all around? ewe. Regardless, I love your comical username and am truly sorry you lost your wife. Congrats on becoming a member. If coming here making rude smart ass comments makes your life a bit more bearable after your loss, keep those comments coming. I truly hope you are ok. I lost the love of my life years ago and understand.
So sorry for your loss. I truly understand how that feels.
I would apologize for rude comments if anyone has been truly offended.
Yet in these times a bit of humor and a laugh are the things that seem to make life a little more tolerable. At least for me. And TBH I have a good bit of brain damage too, which seems to have be a factor as well. (sorry?)
I do appreciate your tolerance though.
It’s really not my intention to offend anyone here, within reason…
I appreciate your comments always.
And do wish you all the best too.
Do you use that username on another site?
Not used on any other site.
Wish you a good day.
Ran across someone on a history and trivia site using it.
Perhaps a spiritual twin?
I once ran into someone I knew on elisetalk in person at a completely different event.
Eventually realized it was the same person.
You never know.
Ever see the SNL skit about Colonel Angus?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l2oi-X8P38
We loved it.
For the life of me I cannot remember why I decided this would be a good username. But it does cause mass confusion when the annual Autopian merch package arrives at my place addressed to some person named Sensual Bugling Elk.
Hah, for some reason my lizard brain was parsing ‘bugling’ into ‘bulging’ which I alway thought was a touch over the line as far as a handle went.
Looking at it slowly now as bugling my brain is not envisioning some Elk stepping out of a Golds gym all muscly! I must have a lizard brain, too.
That would be bulging, I believe his is bugling as in a musical instrument played by the boy in Company B.
turns out bugling is also the high pitched mating call of an Elk. Google to the rescue. Info I never knew I wanted to know and do now.
Thank you I knew that but baby steps for the people that are spelling challenged
I just realized you were insulting me!!! Hey I CAN spell! Fuck you, screw you, and your user name checks out! Add asshole to the end of your user name and you are there! Perfect user name going forward for you is Mr Sarcastic Asshole. You are welcome douche bag. Was I spelling challenged on that prick? I’m pretty sure I spelt prick and douche correctly. jerk. yup, just spelt jerk correctly, too! What’s next Mr Sarcastic Asshole, is my sentence structure going to be critiqued as well???? Fuck you, I comment here for the fun of it, not to be analyzed by Mr Sarcastic Assholes like you jerk!!!! ha ha, I said big a word with anal in it. Did I spell it right?
Wow…
I’ve used this name around the internets for decades, and sometimes people get the reference. Sadly all of them are at least my age…
Ralph, is that you?
Mine is the mythical Greek underworld guard dog (the 3-headed version) for a bunch of reasons, none of them in reference to the PE company.
Also not to be confused with Cerebus the aardvark
My username asks if you know any other cars that got a No.1 hit in the UK charts?
Is that you Prefect?
No, Ford Prefect is related and we are both work in the same area but he was last seen living it up at the restaurant at the end of the universe whereas I ended up hanging with some Daleks and a couple of weirdos who burnt one million £
My username since the late 90s has been rockloop followed by some numbers. It stands for my name wherein “loop” = “o”
“Internet usernames are a wonderful slice of what makes us human. Some people just choose whatever generic tag a system may spit out. Others may choose something close to them.”
I feel seen. Egg salad is tasty!
Made me think of Frasier’s theme and the “tossed salad and scrambled eggs…they’re calling again!”
And now you’ve made me think of a delicious salade Nicoise, which is technically an egg salad in that it contains (boiled, rather than scrambled) eggs. Plus grilled tuna. Yum!
I chose my username because I just thought it was punny (YMMV).
‘Lastavailable username’ was already taken.