Instant Messaging is Soooo 2004

[maxcelcat]

Don't ask me why, but I've ended up occasionally chatting online to the thirteen year old daughter of a friend of mine. Not a whole lot, we (strangely) have nothing in common.

What amused me was the display name she's using. I've seen the likes of it before. Strings of characters which look for all the world like line noise. Tildas (~) etc. etc. However, this one was impressive, stretching over several lines on my display (slightly edited to make her less identifiable):

____ s k y™ // ~ i always knew i knew || i hate nz withh love * t b f L;; - --:

(Hmmmm, live journal has clipped some of the spaces from it, it's a lot longer in MSN.)

I feel quite inadequate by comparison. My display name is "Maxcelcat - Salariman". I'm just not trying, I'm just an online old fuddy duddy. What do you recon, ok_i_give_in?

I also wonder how one comes up with this kind of thing. Does it evolve, just getting longer and longer? Is it static? Is someone somewhere making a sociological study of the phenomenon? And if not, why not? :-)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_megalomania_/]

I'm always the one with boring names when I'm on any sort of messenger. I always just call myself "Steph" (for the obvious reason of that being my name *g*). Or I'll go by something that amuses me as long as it's very very short (ie Queen of Normality in a discussion proving that I was very much NOT the Q of N). But all that...stuff...is a little scary.

Some folks on my msn do it and...if you're an online old fuddy duddy I might be too :P