The Great Gamer Tag Identity Crisis of the early 90s.
WarMachine. I don't know where it came from. Ozzy had War Pigs but that wasn't it. Somewhere in my head there's a ghost reference, a song or a lyric or maybe just the word "war" next to the word "machine" and my teenage brain said yes, this is who I am now.
Then I changed my name, to reflect music bands I loved (see below note about deftones and WHY I didn't use a deftones related name is beyond me). I was "Staind" but this was too specific so a good variation of this was "Faild_" and finally I settled on "Kadafi_". I wanted strangers on a 36.6K connection to see my name in the kill feed and feel something. Preferably dread.
I switched my ISP to one in Virginia, because I thought "If I move my internet closer to Virginia, Virginia will be closer to me" and my ping on my favorite server would be incredible. It wasn't. I was completely wrong, obviously with this move lol.
Rage Assimilators [RA]. A clan named after a concept I couldn't define, designed in the margins of my church bulletin, founded on the principle that looking good was the same as being good. We were a cool clan, but it was too much work and I would later join Blood of the Fold [FOLD] in my QWTF days where I wore the clan name proudly, because they were well known and feared.
Meanwhile my email [email protected] never made the cut as a gamer tag because it didn't project dominance. I needed opponents to fear me before the match started. While listening to Deftones in my headphones. The band I worshipped and loved.
Jake would have sufficed. But Jake doesn't make anyone nervous. Jake is just a guy.
It was a facade anyway.
Which reminds me, my first online name was "savings".
Yes.
"savings"
In about 1992 or whenever we first got AOL, I remember installing it and being prompted to enter in an online name... I didn't want to use my name, but I also, honestly, had no idea WHAT this name would represent, nor how and where it would be reflected. I still vividly remember looking at our closet door, and it had a print out with "BIG SAVINGS" on it.
Perfect!
Savings has left the chat.
❤️
Jake