There is a serious epidemic going on that all of us are ignoring, and itâs been bothering me for quite some time. I donât care about mercury in the water, toilet snakes, or swallowing my own tongue anymore. This is a far worse threat to society.
Now, I realize itâs risky this early in the game to start quoting Radiohead songs, but Iâm concerned that we are leaving future generations high and dry, depriving them of the ability to reserve their desired usernames, domain names and gamertags because we are snatching them up for ourselves without giving even a single, solitary crap.
You may be laughing this off. Taking it lightly. Calling me a âwarmongerâ or âDoomsday Donna.â Well, my name isnât Donna, and here is where youâre missing the point:
Suppose you really like pens. You love them. Inky, pointy, blue, black, ballpointâyou canât get enough. Letâs suppose you love them so much that you want to be a professional online pen entrepreneur and create a business called âPen Island.â Naturally, you want to purchase the coinciding domain name, but too bad for you because I already reserved www.penisland.com one time when I was drinking, because I thought it would be hilarious.
That doesnât seem like a huge deal, does it? Wrong. Because guess what? Maybe in the future, Penis Land is going to be a very real, serious devastated area, like New Orleans after Katrina. And there wonât be a penisland.com website to accept your donations because, surprise, I forgot the login password. Now Iâm in a three-hour phone conversation with Go Daddy and, since Iâm drinking again to numb myself of the pain Iâm feeling from the Penis Land disaster, all I can think to yell at the customer service representative is that Danica Patrick has lost ten out of her last ten races.
This is a serious problem. This is our Y2K. (But like, for real this time.)
Personally, I blame AOL. When AOL Instant Messenger hit the scene in 1997, nicknamed âA.I.M.â by some and âaimâ by morons, reserving domain names became the Internet equivalent of the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. (That, of course, is an assumption. I didnât read the entire Wikipedia entry on this land run, but I did see Far And Away with Tom Cruise.) Suddenly, every young person in America started grabbing screennames in a maniacal frenzy:
LisaFoiles. Nope. Boring.
HummerLuvr86. Why am I getting all these weird Ims?
Xx_ColdplayRockZ_xX. BOOM. Perfect.
I took three screennames off the market in under twenty minutes, and that was just finding my screenname for that day. Iâd do the same thing again the following day. In my lifetime, Iâve probably takenânay, stolenâover 200 A.I.M. screennames, without ever taking into consideration that my daughter or my daughterâs daughter might one day be a Hummer Lover (86).
My only hope is that my daughter will never need to reserve HummerLuvr86 on AOL Instant Messenger, because the sheer fact that it still has AOL in its name makes it an inferior messaging service that frankly should have died off years ago. But thatâs really here nor there.
This is especially detrimental to up and coming bands. In this fast, cutthroat cyber cesspool of smut and elitism we wade through every day, only bands with great names survive, but more specifically, only bands with great names AND corresponding websites and Twitter accounts survive. Itâs no longer about choosing a great band name. Nay, itâs about choosing a band name that still has a domain name available. Thatâs why your new metal band isnât called something awesome like Save The Empire, but rather something retarded like The Flying Cockwrenches.
Same goes for gamertags. We never had to reserve a unique nickname for our NESs, 64s, or Genesises⌠Genesi. Now, our entire online console gaming lifestyle depends on our gamertag. Do you really think those are all going to be scrapped anytime soon to make way for a new service? Unlikely. Itâs looking as though weâll be stuck with our Xbox and PSN names for a freakishly long time; letâs hope we picked a good one and too bad for those who didnât. Have fun switching from âFapSausageâ to âNinerzFanâ once you get married and kissing that 50k gamerscore goodbyeâthat is, if you donât want to fork over the 800 Microsoft points to change it. (âThose greedy bastards wonât get my money!â)
I realize this is all pretty scary, but brace yourself for the worst part: Gmail.
Guys, Iâm pretty sure Google isnât going under any time soon like weâve all been expecting. In fact, they seem to have gotten pretty hugeâhuge to the point that I assume everyoneâs email address is âtheir full nameâ âatâ âgmail.com,â and if it isnât, Iâm utterly dumbfounded as to what could possibly be wrong with them. Really? Your email address is [email protected] instead of [email protected]? THATâs the email address you feel comfortable reading off to your car insurance representative over the phone? Because, surprise, your rates just went up on your hot pink Camry.
If Gmail is now the standard and, hypothetically, Google continues to rule the world for all eternity, arenât we going to run out of usernames? Our poor future generations will never know the luxury of simply having their name as their email handle, without irritating numbers at the end or having to add in their middle name for an extra long email address that no one wants to type. And when no one wants to type your email address, no one is going to email you. Not even spammers. They donât have time for that many letters.
Our current generation is sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast of available usernames, and weâre selfishly inhaling them until weâre bloated, leaving nothing for our children except gelatinized cranberry sauce in the shape of a can. Because seriously, who eats that?
Honestly. I donât know how many more metaphors you need from me.
Look, Iâve been through a lot of crap in life and several near death experiences, two of which involved illegal fireworks, and I still say there is nothing more infuriating than coming up with the greatest username/Twitter handle/gamertag/domain name of all time only to see that itâs already taken and the owner isnât even using it.
This happened to me for the first time seven years ago, and that damned URL is still a blank page filled with fifty animated âunder constructionâ GIFs. Sure, I couldâve gone with .org or .biz, but come on, no one is taking those seriously.
That is whatâs in store for our children. That is what weâre leaving for them. In two hundred years, some way hotter, cooler, and more famous Lisa Foiles is really going to want lisafoiles.com, but that bitch isnât going to get it because the login information will be stored deep within my dead brain. Sheâll even be unable to use futuristic technology to tap into my brain to retrieve this information because I assume Iâll have made my living relatives sign some sort of privacy document preventing that shit.
We are pirates, all of usâwe steal as many usernames across the net as we can and say âtough marblesâ to anyone else who wants them or more rightly deserves them. Will you be the one to step up and stop reserving all the good usernames? Or, after reading this article, will you embark on a tireless mission to scoop up even more of them as a giant middle finger to generations to come? This is the paradox I leave you with, friends.
And speaking of great band names, if any of you have upcoming weddings, funerals, or bar mitzvahs, please consider booking my 90âs alternative rock band, The Ally McBeal Surprise. Youâll find us at the corresponding website URL.
Kotaku Presentsâ debut season features Lisa Foiles, who is best known as the former star of Nickelodeonâs award-winning comedy show, All That. She currently works as an actress/web host in Hollywood and is continuing to dabble in video game voiceovers. For more info, visit Lisaâs official website Sheâs also on Twitter
