Deshazowfication
After eight years of having my MSN alias as “shazow”, it has now been changed to “Andrey”. Many of you wont notice, some of you may freak out — like the illustration of Misko freaking out above (no, it’s not a girl with poor bladder control, whose bad perm caught fire).
This monumental event is for many reasons. Partly because I’m tired of having people ask me “who are you?” after adding me. But for the most part, I’m trying to embrace a wave of change that has been building for some time now. “Going off my beaten path,” as Maria put it. I’ll still be retaining my shazow.net blog and various instances of said alias on various services, but changing my MSN alias is a big step for me. Eight years. Hard drives don’t even last that long. I must have used MSN on half a dozen different computers, and the same number of different IM clients.
Identity is overrated.
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Congrats
-hyfen
Holly crap, what is the temperature in hell like these days?
Above hair melting point.
nice work. I’ve been trying to get people to switch to their given names for quite a while now. Andrew (posting above) refuses to switch claiming that there are too many others with the same name in the world, and he’ll just get lost in the pile. However I think it’s more than that. I think it involves taking a responsibility for what you say (both good and bad). Personally I think it’s almost childish to use an alias these days - especially on MSN where everyone should know you. It’s one thing if people actually call you by that name in public but if they don’t then you shouldn’t be using it.
There are a handful of people that call me “shazow” in person, as funny as it sounds. And a lot more from my previous life, who unfortunately fell off the radar.
It has less to do with “taking responsibility” for me, and more with just trying something different…
Hey Andrey! I did notice that you changed your MSN alias awhile ago but I didn’t have a chance to comment on it until now. :P Good job on stepping out of your online identity and showing your true self online. I use to go by my alias, “nauht” which is my first name spelt backwards. I choose it because it had some symbolism behind the backwardness and my personality on and offline, but then I realized I should just try and be myself, whether it’s online or in RL.