The other day, I noticed something that sort of pertained to what I wrote a few months ago about killing off JiveMasterT. I see a lot of people doing this, albeit, subconsciously. I’m not sure when this change in mentality began and I believe I was actually late to the party. What follows here is what I think happened.
Over the past ten years, the way that people identify themselves on the internet has changed drastically. It’s not quite obvious because the change was very gradual and it has not totally affected every area of the internet. Despite this, it definitely happened. It’s almost like when your girlfriend asks you if you think she’s lost weight. It happened so gradually you didn’t notice but when asked - you notice. There was a time when someone could jump onto IRC and chat with their friends using a username that had varying value. The username could be thrown away if its reputation faltered and it could be retained if it had meaning and significance to those that interacted with it.