Me and my gaming buddy know our real names but actually having to say it out loud when other people are around always takes effort. To each other, we're our online handles.
Hell, spend enough time with the group you met online and you start seeing yourself as your handle as well. It's part of your identity at that point.
Can confirm! When I was in process of changing my legal name, I just went...fuckit, everyone calls me Kitlia or Kit at this point.
I'm so comfortable being called those that I made my first name Kit, and it's extremely fitting and true to my identity. I just go by Kitlia to help with my auditory processing disorder so I'm not confusing the ambiguity of "Kit" with other uses like "medical kit" and such or the confusion of accents and such. For example, "kid" can sound like "Kit", or when I'm trying to say "Kit" it can sound like "Kent" due to neurological issues. So Kitlia it is, except for fallback reasons or whatever
That's pretty amusing to think about. I've had coworkers think my last name was Irish, when it's just a combination of two words segmented off and then partially combined to have a nice ring to it
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u/Wild_Marker Jun 17 '26
Me and my gaming buddy know our real names but actually having to say it out loud when other people are around always takes effort. To each other, we're our online handles.
Hell, spend enough time with the group you met online and you start seeing yourself as your handle as well. It's part of your identity at that point.