New names amnesty

[Toby Gymshorts]

New names amnesty

I considered a name change for a while, but got roundly shouted down. Then I kinda promised DG I'd change it to "Toby Oilpainting" but really, who has the time for such inconsequential matters. Far better to spend my time on finely crafted posts such as, erm, this one.

[Toby Gymshorts]

New names amnesty

If I had gone with a new name, it was going to be the nicely nerdy Herzog Zwei. Someone else can have that one if they like.

[Benjm]

New names amnesty

WOM wrote:

Right. And this new...I dunno...fella or whatever, he's the store-brand, warm, outside your back door while your parents are rowing inside.

From a two litre bottle, opened and half finished weeks before, its sparkle a no more than homeopathic memory?

Damn. This is worse than I thought.

[3 Colours Red]

New names amnesty

I don't think I've been here long enough for a name change to mean anything, I did alter my personal text though - it was an old joke, I didn't like the phrasing and it wasn't actually fitting towards my personality and complete lack of criminal record.

The new one however - absolutely spot-on.

[Janik]

New names amnesty

Hugh Fatbastard wrote: you've probably changed your name more than anyone here, yet still get referred to as your previous self.

.. or should that be prior self ? someone will show me the way.

All the other personae are mere avatars. And we all know that. There is only one deep truth to a character, and that was perfectly captured many years ago.

[Borracho]

New names amnesty

Geoffrey de Ste. Croix wrote:

I haven't looked at anything to back this up, but would guess that the current Green Calx is the leader in the clubhouse at the moment. He's had close to half a dozen Aphex Twin inspired monikers alone.

I'm reckon GC's next name change will be "fz pseudotimestretch+e+3 [138.85]".

I recently toyed with Wax The Nip before rejecting it on grounds of racial sensitivity.

[Borracho]

New names amnesty

No way in hell am I the leader, by the way. Duncan Gardner has had about 40 different names in all the time I've been on here.

[ursus arctos]

New names amnesty

But those were mostly/all for his alternate account.

[Kusal Flyer]

New names amnesty

Post early, post often. Guilty as charged, yer honor.

Murali's Webbing
Fremantle Doctor
Ntini Rampage
Tostao Maicon Special

etc.

[hobbes]

New names amnesty

I'd change my name, but I'm a bit scared I wouldn't be able to change it back when I inevitably regretted it.

[blameless]

New names amnesty

Much in the same vein as EIM: no matter how many names changes our resident Croato-Swede Milanista undergoes he will always be "ganja".

[blameless]

New names amnesty

I'd change my name, but I'm a bit scared I wouldn't be able to change it back when I inevitably regretted it.

That, and "artist-formerly-known-as-hobbesian wrongness / rightness" would be a pain in the arse for the rest of us to type out every time.

[hobbes]

New names amnesty

I'm also a bit scared that no one would notice and my ego would shatter like Michael Owen's hamstrings after 20 games in a season.

[blameless]

New names amnesty

Oh, and another thing I realised about usernames: because I never change mine, I've been using "blameless" as a name longer than the indie band whose CD I was listening to when I registered for OldTF back in the day.

[My Name Is Ian]

New names amnesty

I took the opportunity to change my username when we went from the old board to this one. Seemed like an appropriate time to. I certainly spend more time than is good for me hovering my mouse pointer over peoples' profiles, trying to figure out who's who, but I think I'm on top of it at the moment.

[Belhaven]

New names amnesty

As long as people have registered a favourite football club I can usually sort out who they are even if their moniker has been changed.

[Banana Banana]

New names amnesty

Chippy, sometimes Chrirpy, changed to Banana Banana in the 2010 world cup. As my surname is Fyfe (not quite Fyffe) so Bananas was my nickname at school. And it's a pun on Bafana Bafana if you hadn't worked that out.

And I didn't flounce off, just came here less and less as generally real life got happier and work got busier. I was on here toooo long at times. I also did an Open University MSc a few years ago so it took all my spare time and I never got back into the swing of things here.

I am also now working in Amsterdam so life has changed a lot.

[hobbes]

New names amnesty

Nice to see you drop in, old boy. Hope things are progressing nicely.

[ursus arctos]

New names amnesty

What hobbes said.

It is interesting the degree to which we always seem to maintain a Dutch contingent, even though the individuals change over time.

[Various Artist]

New names amnesty

Belhaven wrote: As long as people have registered a favourite football club I can usually sort out who they are even if their moniker has been changed.

It's the people who post here on what is notionally a football message board without expressing any allegiance to a club that baffle me. Or, more to the point perhaps, what really gets my goat is when someone from this category contributes to, say, the Preseason Friendlies thread and blithely states, "We're playing at Blyth Spartans away on the 6th, at Barcelona C on the 9th and then there should be a local team coming to ours on the 12th" without providing any context whatsoever. The apparent assumption thus seems to be that every single person reading is somehow so familiar with them as to identify who "we" are and where "ours" is without their needing to lower themselves to typing it.

[sw2borshch]

New names amnesty

My context is in my name.

And there's certainly at least a handful of people who simply aren't interested in football.

[Various Artist]

New names amnesty

Well, yes, there's no hiding your allegiance with that moniker, and also you do have it listed in your profile anyway.

How did the people who simply aren't interested in football navigate their way onto these boards in the first place, I wonder? I mean, I'm not interested in fly-fishing, but I don't hang around angling messageboards. Is the fact that all human life is seemingly here in the 'other' forums enough for people to be attracted in by osmosis from all over the web despite having no stake in its actual raison d'être?

[ursus arctos]

New names amnesty

Don't most such posters indicate their allegiance in the form of the jersey icon under their name?

Most of the "non football" posters were initially attracted by the Music board, which once featured a lot of extremely talented posters (many of whom write about music for a living). Some of the others were referred by those who enjoy World.

[Various Artist]

New names amnesty

Ah, thanks for that last paragraph ursus, that's quite enlightening.

ursus arctos wrote: Don't most such posters indicate their allegiance in the form of the jersey icon under their name?

Yes, it's the exceptions to this that I was talking about. If I can hover over the little shirt then obviously I can find out someone's team without them spelling it out in a post, and of course on the other hand if someone wishes to reveal nothing of their allegiance or indeed doesn't have one that's entirely their prerogative.

I've just found it frustrating lately though when following (or trying to follow) that Preseason Friendlies thread in particular when someone (and it's happened with several people, which is why it started to grate on me) with neither jersey icon nor indicative name or location drops in, talks about whom "my club" or "we" are set to play and departs again without bothering to state for the benefit of the uninitiated who the hell they're talking about. I know there's really nothing to it besides oversight, not in fact ego, but this does come across (however inadvertently) as rather arrogant: the tacit assumption appears to be that we've all taken an interest in them enough to just know without being informed. Or cliquey: i.e. everyone important enough to matter won't need telling. Yet if there's hundreds of members on these boards and the reader is even vaguely a neophyte (I've been on here for [strike]three or four years[/strike] [...checks...] five years but don't have a remotely encyclopaedic mental list of whom every single regular and semi-regular poster supports) then there's no way of telling, unless you're prepared to look up and trawl through months or years of each such person's posting history for clues.
I stress that I'm not singling out anyone for condemnation here, but there we go; my point is simply that that if one is going to provide no indicators then it's pretty damn unhelpful if one posts in a thread specifically to describe the doings of your particular club yet don't bother to point out anywhere at all for the unenlighteneds' sake that "us" means Bristol Rovers, or Chelsea, or Hitchin Town, or Dukla Prague, or whoever.