Topic: Choice of Username and people's perception (Read 853 times)

this is a topic that hasn't been discussed in a while but I still think it's interesting!

there is a great Russian female sniper who has become my idol until now, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, she is a great woman who accidentally discovered her talent and potential as the greatest sniper in history, she inspired me to create the name for this account, when I first read her life story I found it accidentally, in almost every war game I played, I put the name Ludmilla.

How about first impression on an anonymous crypto platform or forum such as this. Where when you blow it, you just might not have a second chance and on the event that you do, you would have a piece of you taken away!

On the bitcointalk, we've got the DTs to pin some errors and miss deeds that raises a flag which functions against you on what ever you might be affiliated with.

As simple as the act of choosing a username would be, picking a username that would put users in the line of wanting you to have to prove yourself everytime doesn't feel like a good one.
You don't be in the way and then hope to get out. Just don't be there!

Well, though you have a point I think it is important to say that when you read a username such as Dic3L0v3r it does make the mind wonder as to the logic applied by the user when he created that alt-account 

Overall, the name of a person would almost become irrelevant and immaterial given that he/she has contributed so much to the forum. There are lots of people here in this forum where their names are somehow weird and alien- like sometimes it is filled with numbers and letters but they become so much irrelevant due to the work they have provided.

A person who judges someone quickly just because their initial impression stemmed from the username is also the same person who would most likely contribute nothing to the forum. Do not worry, OP- this forum is truly forgiving as people will based their perceptions depending on your overall contribution and courtesy in this forum.

that's very true, your name (or your account) is remembered because of the contribution you make to those around you, in this forum, there are many strange and funny account names but have great contributions and are accounts with extraordinary posts.
but you also have to recognize your own ability, you don't need to force yourself to be able to make a big contribution, just don't commit fraud and plagiarism, I think it's enough to protect your good name (your account reputation).

I also didn't think of anything when creating my username. Some people told me that I need to have an account here in Bitcointalk if I want to learn more about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies because there are too many scams and misleading sources everywhere. And that this forum is founded by bitcoin's founder itself and people like Vitalik and other coin developers are here. I wish though that my username started with a capital letter.

And usernames are nothing to be perceived nor judged. But maybe I can think of something if a username is about hatred, racism, and extreme violence.

Agree, so also having a good name doesn't mean a good person but often name is the first factors of people judge us, but mostly the tendency to be the wrong assessment
For the forum username, many choose based on like.
I chose this username because I really liked Android Samsung and really wanted to have it

Contribution is an initiative, you are not required to have it but you must have the knowledge to be here as one of the users who are expected to help other users. But you're right, username is just a name that shouldn't be a benchmark of how much knowledge you have on this forum, in the end it's just a name.

_BlackStar is just a name, but this name has inspired me to have a great journey in this forum even though I am not yet worthy of being named a contributor to anyone and to anything else compared to you and others.

The intent and purpose of the saying is for real life, but it does not rule out that it can be applied on the Bitcointalk forum. Wherever we stand, we must always provide benefits to others so that you are always remembered when you are gone or have left the forum. It doesn't matter if someone uses a forum name that has nothing to do with their life or just uses a user name (Hello, Mmmhh, etc).
The forum does not see how good the name used on the account is, what the forum needs is how much you contribute while you are here, that's what makes you always remembered for giving a lot of education and knowledge to other users.

Seeing you mention Africa, instantly my instincts told me you were from Nigeria before I went ahead to read the parts where you mentioned in quotes some users from our local board. My instincts was from the recent happenings in the country and the security challenges where several atrocities have been attributed to unknowngunmen – UGM – for short. I reasoned anyone who could come up with such username won't be far from being a Nigerian. I'm right, then.

About the-not-so-good experience you said you had upon you entry in the local board and how your moniker allegedly sounded a wrong bell, don't take such experience to heart. I believe those brethren there were just catching cruise and didn't mean anything sinister. Usernames aren't to be taken seriously, anyway.

That reminds me of what I learnt in school years ago – What's in a name? There's another that posited that nothing has a meaning except that which man posits it to mean. By the way, what makes you think those names are even good names? Come to think of it, those names were mere common Jewish names. I've read several discussions on that online and on how they weren't christian names and I believe that to be true.

I think my point was, I don't think I'd actively be looking at usernames, but I can definitely see how someone might be subconsciously bias, and I think most of us are to some degree. I do think it's a bit of a problem if you're actively looking at usernames, and basing your perception of that username on that.

This is like one of the most common ways someone generates a name. Whether it be hotmail, MSN or Xbox. These types of usernames are commonly used. Like I said, most of us don't put a whole lot of thought into the username creation process, mainly because the internet has been around a long time now, and unique usernames don't really exist. I've actually changed my username just because I didn't want to be associated with another user that had the same username. Not because they were bad or anything. That's when I came up with the solution of just going the really generic route of "Welsh". That basically prevented that issue, and didn't take a whole lot of my brain process.

Even though it's been said that a book should not be judged by it cover while some says the fact that covers atimes give the book a good representation right before the reader as well, i want to refer to a quote as well that talks about name which we might be familiar with.


A name can be a true representation of whom you are without anyone asking because with mouth confession is made, why do you need to explain yourself of the name you bear to people when the name itself has done the introduction at first place, why giving yourself unnecessary stress in explaining your personalities, how long will you keep telling everyone that you're a good person and not a bad one due to the name you answer, why choosing it from the first place, also take a look at another quote that tells more about name


I will rather make use of the opportunities round about me in choosing a good name and save myself from unnecessary explanations, the forum does not choose or suggest you a username to bear, you decided what you want, but atimes don't you think given name works perfectly in one's life? of all names you intentionally choose to bear knowngunman just to begin the explanation of yourself as a good person,  it's your decision and choice but you could have choose right before now, but nevertheless i respect your decision.

I'm sure you've heard of the saying that "a tiger dies leaving its fangs behind, an elephant dies leaving its tusks behind but a human dies leaving their NAME behind".

but it is not a determinant / that makes you a good person or not but try to make your name remembered and you yourself make/shape your personality to be good and not damage your name.
for example the name Craig Steven Wright, I'm sure there are a lot of good people out there who have this name, but all the veterans on this forum know the owner of this name as someone who claims himself to be one-sided WP Bitcoin.

Don't stick to the NAME, you yourself have to make your name remembered as a good person!!!

Are you kidding again? But I didn't write about a typo, like? It was done intentionally. I wrote that the nickname generator offered me several options, and I really didn’t care, since I was not going to linger here. Yes, and now I don't give a damn. 
If you still don’t believe that people sometimes don’t care what their nicknames are, then look at the bounty hunters, especially when accounts are registered in large numbers. Again, the nickname generator works with some letters inserted for uniqueness.

My username was first created by rewriting what was suggested from the text box. I think I was creating an email address on Hotmail (a long time ago) and all my choices were already taken, so I just rewrote the hint and added some specific characters.

I know that desperation when you want to sign up with LoyceV and it's taken; you will try LoyceY, taken also, LoyzeV also taken and you will end up taking "Evil Doer" 


Oops! That's true.  Who knows I must have done it already. Language is a big barrier. For the case of Therapist, I'll assume it's Therapist even if the user insists that it is Therapist 


Now you faulted all I said, I'll write theymos to change my username to "Devil" to have a taste of it.

Loyce Valenzuela begs to differ

Don't underestimate the power of desperation, when all the good names are taken already.

What if it's in a language you don't speak? You wouldn't even know what the username means. Or how about someone named "THErapist"? Or "The Therapist"? Aren't we all racist at some level anyway?

What if they're called "grimreaper"? Usually, I assume a nickname is just that: a nickname.

It definitely does, it can be subjective but  I believe firmly that usernames aren't generated randomly and given users. People chose usernames for themselves depending on their mindset to the forum or their particular mood when signing up in the forum.

To put the record straight, I might not be able to handout merits to a user whose username is Racist, Rapist, Pedophile etc. I will surely assume is who they are in the real world. I don't see any reason a conscious mind would choose a bad alias and expect to be treated as a Saint.


This is correct and I have seen where some users said it. I read where Lovesmayfamilis said her username wasn't actually what she intended, but a typo produced an alias she love, now whenever I want to change my TV channel to "Lovebirdfamily" I'll remember her .

Any of my friends that misbehaves I'll call them Little Mouse .

You know how Unknown Gunmen has dealt with people from your community, which is why you get such feedback from your fellow community members; however, it doesn't mean anything because you use the opposite; they are just curious about your choice of name, I believe.
The Bitcointalk forum has nothing to do with your identity; many people come here with strange names, but what matters is what they contribute to the forum. It makes no difference what your name is; all that matters is that you give your all to the community.

Like I said before, it definitely does. The sub conscious of us isn't something we can turn off at a moments notice. There needs to be real effort made to avoid subconscious bias, and even then there's no guarantees. We're humans, and therefore we will always have some sort of bias.

The question would be how much it influences things, probably not all that much, and as I said before measuring that would be near impossible. Ultimately, due to not knowing how to measure it, and therefore no data it's really up to the user themselves. Although, most users probably didn't put a whole lot of thought into their usernames when registering. Most just use some sort of random generation.

Wait a minute!!! You two aren't brothers? 

I'll agree with Loycev on this, if you choose a random name that basically means nothing it's clear you don't care about making a statement with it, but if you choose one with gunman, p**ywrecker, Smoochy Woochy Poochy this does make a first impression you're going to have to work a bit to change.

Speaking of names, I remember the story of how people who named their kids after GoT characters before seeing the end felt after that. You might name your kid something that sounds cool only to find two years later his character turns to be stupid or a villain, or even worse just when you think you have found a new cool name for your daughter a wanna-be pornstar thinks the same.

Ps, Interpol is searching for 41 Jesus, funny enough they aren't searching for a single Judah.

This is incredible! It's funny how you justify and deny most of my points it's shows that you're a legend not only by Forum rank but by wisdom. However, I will agree to disagree with this particular quote. First impressions are mostly likely to be faked just as the name implies. It's to create impression for the first time and what what follows next is to exhibit their real character. I personally don't feel impressed by first encounter.

I'll have to disagree just a bit. Even on theory, new member who have similar username to well known username, such as theym0s and sat0shi (take note it contains number zero). People with some security awareness should know it's common way to perform scam by impersonating someone rather than naively assume owner of that username has no malicious intention.

I want to say: "Of course!" to this. Unlike the name your parents gave you, you actually chose your forum nickname by yourself. Mine came out of a random name generator.
You can't blame users for having different expectations from someone named "gunman" than from someone named "sensualbellax" for instance.

They also say: "You only have one chance to make a first impression"

Exactly my point. Since they already dislike your name, nothing from you will seems good to them and thereby shun your posts even the ones that make sense. I hope I won't be a victim of circumstance.
The forum will be more better if everyone think the way you just said. But nahh the individual differences make things complicated. Like seriously it sink how people judge one by just a mere hearing of name.
Lol  this is funny but you might be right thou. I anticipate to hear the rest of the story if he would mind to share.
Thanks for bringing this up to my attention. I will definitely go through it.

When registering on a crypto forum, today's newbies often use the word "crypto" in their nicknames, and this already indicates that people understand where they are. But many came to the forum just out of curiosity, registered in order to be able to communicate, and did not think about their nicknames. My nickname was created by the most common generator. Five options were offered, and I just chose the one that I have now by typing. It didn't seem to me like anything reprehensible if I chose this nickname; moreover, I did not expect to be on the forum for a long time. But everything turned out differently, and I practically abandoned all other forums, giving preference to this one. 
By the way, OP, there is a topic on funny nicknames. You can read it; I think it might be interesting for you.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60041950

Most of the usernames in this forum are chosen and used as uniquely as possible. it will not reflect anything against what is done on the forum. but for the most part, want to remain anonymous without being aware of his real-life issues.

maybe someone made a username according to the intent and purpose of him being on the forum. like cheater detector. of course, he chose a username that was intended for a specific purpose as the identity of his activities on the forum.


I think you created it when you were confused about choosing a username and then looking at the brand of computer mouse device you are using. 

I don't know why people are very judgmental nowadays.
People are basing one's attitudes on their usernames and in my case where most of the time I'm playing online games, there are some players that I saw where they are basing other players' attitude on their IGN which is unacceptable. I said unacceptable because I didn't ever do this.

Usernames are only usernames for me, and it doesn't represent the true identity of the person who is using it. I've seen weirder more dangerous IGN's than you OP and I didn't try to judge them because I don't know them personally.

Just look at my username LogitechMouse. Can people judge me based on my username .

You're name doesn't mean anything to me, your actions is how I see you on this forum. If you only post in altcoin sections and make bounty posts, I will conclude you are simply a user looking to claim bounty tokens. If you are informative in most of your posts and try to help users with your knowledge of a certain subject, I would conclude you're probably a genuine user who cares about the community.

There are many more examples but the point is actions make the man, not the name.

In theory it shouldn't matter, in reality it probably does matter to some extent, whether that's actually distinguishable is probably the right question. Ultimately though, you get to choose your own username here, so if you didn't want to get stereotyped or profiled because of your username, you could pick something that you deem less likely for that to happen. Ultimately for me, that wouldn't influence my decision. If people don't like my username or Welsh people, then that's fair enough . It's not going to be a factor in picking a username.

Although, generally it's not something that pops into my head. I imagine many users here don't even look at the username of the poster unless they particularly like or dislike what was said.

While this is probably true for the most part, there will be some subconscious bias to usernames, that's just human nature, which I think is what OP might be onto here. For example, and this is a rather loose example; If you like cars, and someone else has the name CARLOVER3948389, then you might be more inclined to give that user merit or pay more attention since they share a common interest. It might not be a massive amount of bias, but I'm sure there will be some there if you did a case study on it. I imagine there's been other studies in a similar vain that have been conducted.

Whatever the name means, it's just your username. Many people use pseudonyms that don't really support any particular knowledge. Name isn't everything, forum need knowledge behind the name you use as username, and that's you.

Sometimes the name can also be a imagin of the owner's personality, for example lovemayfamilis. He seemed to really love his family. But character someone is not formed from a name, it's something you do for whatever you like in this forum.

When a new user creates an account on the forum, he even doesn't know the culture of the forum (in case not alt). So username would be anything that the user like or have in mind. For example, since it's the crypto forum I use Vator with crypto. It doesn't mean I am an expert on crypto lol. But I work against many scams and still fight when I notice something unusual on the forum. So I don't believe username or name is related to users' behavior. How the username will go depends on the user's behavior. A bad name would be lightning by contribution. A good name would be a scammer as well.

well your username sounds like you are the Man from Toronto.

we all have different culture. American Indians name their babies with something unusual going on the time the baby is born. thats why there are names like Crazy Horse because there was a horse acting crazily while they think of his name.

this is you can picture what happened when you met someone with the name "Two Dogs Fucking" or "Pocupine Coming out the ass Backwards".

seriously, i doubt youd be judged by your username though. but they may suspect something like you could be from the deep web looking for clients who pays for the service. are you?

It's quite clear, many people think that a person's character, personality  can be measured by name, but it is not a perfect benchmark in judging someone, because the name is only a gift, not from someone's personality, only as a gift.

In this forum someone can give their account name however they want, basically:


The quote is a point, the name we think is funny is not funny, what we think is scary is not scary, meaning that you are comfortable in this forum not based on your name, but your comfort based on your attitude and behavior here.

When I first created my account, I gave like zero thought to my "Name"... I just picked something different/unusual. It never meant anything at all really, it just popped into my head at the time.

So, based on my own experience, I don't judge anyone by their username, it's just a string of chars really... I judge people by their actions and words.

Your birth name was given to you by your parents, however, when you register on the online forum, you can choose a username (nick) to go by. For this very reason, you are responsible for how other members will perceive you within the community. It is obvious that if you choose a username that will evoke emotional reactions from other members, your experience on the forum will be affected. I agree that a username alone cannot be a reflection of someone's character or personality, but you shouldn't expect others to change their perception simply because you are uncomfortable with it. Your choice of username should be something that is appropriate for the community. If someone sees your username and thinks that it's immature or unprofessional, then they'll have a negative opinion of you before they even get to know you.

I'm not trying to tell you what name to choose, but rather to help you understand why choosing a username that is appropriate for the community can make all the difference.

Thanks for the clarity. Most people do think your username has everything to do with you forgetting that in most cases, they're generated out joy and not putting anything in consideration talk more of linking the username with their real attitude.
Lol I have also seen weird names here with the little time I have spent here already.

As they say, "Don't judge a book by its cover". There's no point in judging someone through an internet forum username. Do people think I'm a Little Mouse  lol. When I registered here, I was trying to get something unique that I never used in any other forum or anywhere on the internet. I believe most people pick usernames in that way.

I got remember a forum username- ikilledcobain (can't remember where I have seen though.)

Your ranking up is not determined by your name on bitcointalk. If you contribute good in discussions, you would be an established member on this forum. But it is good to give yourself a name not attributed to something bad.

Also know that username can be different from people's real name. Do not make this confusing.

It's worrisome that people use one's name to judge and conclude that one is a bad character. In my continent; Africa, most parents give names to their children in memories of their great parents depending on their traditions and culture. As such, the behavior of the child has nothing to do with the name he/she answered. Children are mostly influenced by the behavior of their parents and not the name they bear.
The above quotes made me to understand that people still believe that your name has connection with your attitude and also made me to wonder whether I will have a chance to prove myself and be comfortable in this forum. Having bad name doesn't mean one is bad please.