Inadequate Naming
519 words.
I need a new name.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I like the name of the blog, Endgame Viable. But I don’t like using UltrViolet as my personal identity.
It’s weird, because I am UltrViolet. Ever since I was in the Crayola Clan back in NetQuake days. Ah, good ol’ ]CC[-UltrViolet.
But in this age of cross-media brand recognition and whatnot, it’s a terrible name. There’s no ‘a’ in my UltrViolet, which is vitally important to the name. There’s a reason there’s no ‘a’ which goes all the way back to Quake in 1996. (Reason: “]CC[-UltraViolet” was one character too long to fit in the 15-character limit.)
But when I’m streaming, it’s really awkward to say UltrViolet without an ‘a’ in it. I say “ULTER-violet” instead of “ULTRA-violet” to emphasize the difference. I’m quite sure nobody gets that, and people just think I have a weird accent or a speech impediment or possibly a brain defect.
The other major problem with UltrViolet is that someone already has @ultrviolet on Twitter. I mean, what the crap. Who else in the entire world would have any reason to spell “ultraviolet” without an ‘a’? (That person on Twitter is not me, in case you’re wondering.)
A third major problem with UltrViolet is that some years ago a major motion picture came out with a girl character named Ultraviolet. So now half the world probably thinks that UltrViolet is a girl’s name, when in fact it’s a crayon’s name.
What to do. Before I was UltrViolet, I was Salamander, but I see a lot of Salamanders out there in the gaming world and it’s just too common. And I don’t even need to look on Twitter to know that someone already has @salamander. Pretty sure someone wrote a bot to claim every dictionary word on Twitter soon after it went public.
Why not just call myself “Endgame Viable?” Well, to me, it’s a brand name, so to speak. It’s not my name. It’s the name of the web site. I feel pretty dumb using @endgameviable for “personal” stuff on Twitter. I feel like it should be reserved for announcements and information about the site itself.
Of course it’s even more dumb to change my Twitter handle now that I’ve built up a handful of followers for @endgameviable. If I come up with a new one I’ll be throwing away all of those followers.
On the other hand, there aren’t that many followers so now would be the best time to change. Better than when I have a million followers, for example, because that’s totally going to happen.
You might be wondering why I would care about separating my gamer identity from the brand name of the blog. Well, obviously I’m going to rocket to success and become super famous any day now. When that happens I will need to sell the blog to a major media company for millions of dollars. But I would want to retain my personal gamer identity so that I can use my star power on whatever my next project will be.
That sounds realistic, right?
Archived Comments
Miss Mojo 2014-05-22T15:23:39Z
If you’re most known as your blogger persona, then why not just go with a brand new name for your gaming persona? Just get a fresh start on that name, while keeping your blogger-name/brand name :) I mostly use a name that is pretty similar to my blog’s name BUT I have the option to name myself whatever and just link the name to my blog so people know who I am, if they are curious. In the end it doesn’t matter to much what you are called in a game if you just put it up here in the blog anyways.
I changed blog in the middle of this NBI stuff, I wish I did it before it rather then later, because I did lose a lot of the followers I had built, not that there were many. But I had 70+, now I’m probably half that.
As for twitter, you can change your name whenever you want and you wont lose your followers, you don’t need to change accounts or anything as there is an option to change ur @name.
And if there are names you want, or like, just make it a bit different with an extra letter, wierd letters or something. I first named my blog Miss Mojo, but ofc there were tons of those out there. So I ended up with Missy’s Mojo, which is totally different in a way. My ingame characters all start with Miss, but can end with every name there is, so I can change when I want to but still be known as Missy :)
Good Luck!
Wilhelm Arcturus 2014-05-22T15:27:08Z
Heh, there is a whole blog name/personal identity thing that can be troublesome. I picked the name of my blog on a whim, but in hindsight it was something of a mistake and I would pick something else if I could choose again. The title of my blog, “The Ancient Gaming Noob” refers to me, so people also refer to me using the blog title, or “TAGN,” or occasionally “The Noob.” But my handle, my nom de plume, is Wilhelm Arcturus, which almost nobody uses in reference to me.
I would probably go with, “The Wilhelm Arcturus MMO Experience” or something like that were I to choose again. But after nearly 8 years, the only association most people have with my writing is under the TAGN banner… so I’ll stick with that for now. (Though I did spend some time trying to come up with another name that fit the TAGN acronym.)
ultrviolet 2014-05-22T17:25:20Z
Oh wow I had no idea you could change your Twitter username. That’s awesome. Thanks!
I think I’ll leave things as they are for now. If I try to change something I’ll probably make it worse. :)
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