Username

Every username has a story. Most people pick a username, sign up, and move on. Mine kept making people curious, so I got used to hearing their guesses.

When I was in school, my tuition teacher Dinesh had this bizarre username: d7d77d7d77. It looked like something out of a hacker movie, with a pattern I couldn't quite make sense of. I asked him about it once. He didn't really answer, just smiled and said, "Go on." So I opened an account somewhere and typed the first thing that felt similar: v8v88v8v88. I used V because my name starts with it, and 8 because I just liked the number.

Then I never stopped using it.

After a while, it stopped feeling like a random string and started feeling like mine. Before I knew it, I was using the same name pretty much everywhere.

People, obviously, tried to decode it.

"You into cars? V8 engines?"

"Is it about the V8 JavaScript engine?"

The car theory was way off. The JavaScript one was actually kind of cool, so I never corrected anyone too hard. I liked the connection to speed and performance, even though that wasn't why I picked it.

The number 8 just kept showing up anyway. Turn it sideways and it becomes infinity, that loop that never ends. Maybe that's why the name stuck around in people's heads. Then there's the kundli twist: apparently 8 is my lucky number. I don't exactly live by astrology or anything, but it still cracks me up that the username came first and the "8 is lucky for you" bit showed up years later. Just a coincidence, but a funny one.

Another thing: having a username this weird is super practical. It's free almost everywhere. I've got v8v88v8v88 on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub, and even as my own domain,v8v88v8v88.com.

The way people pronounce it is a whole separate joke. I've heard versions that sound like "V8V8V8V8" and others that somehow end as "weate." Half the time it feels like their brain lagged mid-word. For the record, it's simple: just call meV8, and if we're close, V also works. Anything other than this is just straight up wrong.

When I first came up with this username, I wanted it to be a secret alias. Nothing dramatic, just a username that didn't point back to my real life. But once you start using something everywhere, it stops being secret pretty fast. It turned into my handle, then my pen name, then basically my default face online. I used to write under it too – posts, comments, short pieces that are probably buried or deleted now – but the name stayed.

At some point I realised a username isn't just a mask. It's more like a little flag you leave behind in different corners of the internet.

If I've learned anything from this, it's that names grow on you. You pick something in five seconds and, years later, it carries years of memories. For me, that'sv8v88v8v88. It hasn't been "just a username" for a long time. It's a small, oddly shaped part of who I am online.

Now I'm curious about yours. How did your username happen? Maybe you spent an hour perfecting it, maybe you stole it from some game character, or maybe you just mashed keys once and never changed it. If your username has even a half-decent story – stupid, serious, or somewhere in between – mail it to me atv8v88v8v88@protonmail.com.

- V8