on nicknames

my given name is Gabriel. I’m okay with saying this here, because it’s not exactly hard to find that out.
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- I don’t really try to conceal my real world identity; you can even find my up to date photos online, and I’m okay with them being there.
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you may’ve noticed however that I don’t ever use my real name on the treehouse (outside of this branch.) nor do I use my real name on any social platforms or chat apps.
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so you may be left wondering, “what’s the deal with you calling yourself liquidex?”
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I’m a zoomer; the Internet existed since before I was born. my first exposure to the world of computers (and the Internet) was when I was just 6 years old, and I remember my uncle telling me something along the lines of:

Do not type in your real world details anywhere online.

Not your name, your home address, your phone number.

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- this was in 2010.
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- so I took that advice very seriously. never input your real world data anywhere.
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later on my cousin would introduce me to the world of email and online chat. she came up with a nickname for me, gabens.
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- it’s pronounced like “gah-bens.” this was before Gaben was popular in Poland.
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I didn’t really like that nickname though, since it still had my real name in it… so I used it for email only, and went on to search for a different one.
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- I went through many iterations. in 2014, I finally arrived at the word liquid, which had a really cool sound to it.
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  - I came up with this word while playing around with Mom’s smartphone at the time. I was in the car with my sister, waiting for Mom to leave work and drive us home, and I was playing around with HTC’s image editor.
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    we had just adopted a cat at the time; I was using a picture of her as my test subject.
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    (she’s still alive and well! though she broke her tail a couple years ago )
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    one of the filters was called “Prism” and it had a few kaleidoscope-like patterns, chopping up the image into bits, shifting it around a bunch, and masking off parts. the pattern I liked the most had a distinct italic L-like shape, and as I was looking at the picture, the word liquid popped into my head. “yup, that’s gonna be my new online nickname!”
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- at first I transformed it into liquidek, which is a diminutive of liquid if you interpret it as a Polish word.
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  - later I made it more serious and turned it into iLiquid600.
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  - later I dropped the 600 and it became just iLiquid. it stayed like this for a really long time.
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    my friends got used just to calling me liquid at this point, dropping the i in the front.
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  - then in 2019 we were dicking around in FL Studio with a friend, and I jokingly chose an alias for my shitpost music—DJ Liquidex.
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    I really liked the ring of it though, and in 2020 my online identity went through a rebranding—change all nicknames from iLiquid to liquidex, and adopt a new logo for myself.
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    scroll to the top of the page, and it’s still that same logo! the original had a rainbow in it, but I don’t have it on the website because I thought it was a little too distracting.
    
    fun fact: this logo was drawn in Aseprite, using ENDESGA’s 32 color palette.
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    I think the logo still holds up really well after all these years. it’s unlikely I’ll change it any time soon; it’s basically my digital signature at this point.
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    I might bring back the rainbow though. maybe on hover
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- when I was looking for a fake surname for liquidex, I chose Woźniak. it’s a very common name with Polish roots that starts with the same letter as my real name.
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  - and Steve Wozniak. I don’t know much about him personally, but he seems like a worthy person to look up to.
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- and that’s the whole story; that’s how liquidex came to be. I’ve been using this nickname for a few years now and I really like it. it has a friendly but slightly edgy and quirky vibe to it, which fits my personality well.
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I’m really happy with having a nickname. it represents a part of me I don’t actually hate. it represents something I built up to over many years; my personal brand, my online identity.
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but an interesting thought arises: would I be more normal online if my family hadn’t educated me to hide my own identity?
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and another interesting thought: nicknames seem like a thing of our generation—gen Z.
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- as we were just getting Internet into our homes, our parents wanted us to be safe out there. so to try and minimise the risk of getting manipulated by a pedophile, they told us to never, never ever input our real data online.
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  - there’s an interesting divide that happened because of this.
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    there were the folks that grew up with facebook, which forced you to use your real world identity.
    
    these people generally seem to use their real names everywhere still.
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    there’s also us nerds who grew up doing other things; socialising more online than irl, taking care not to run into any sus people along the way.
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    I’ve been thinking about this and it doesn’t seem like it’s entirely generational; initially it seemed like a gen Z thing, but I know people far older than gen Z who do prefer using a nickname. however, I do think a large portion of gen Z nerds chooses to use nicknames because of how they were raised.
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I’m grateful for my parents’ care when it came to my online presence. sharing your real data online when you’re a kid sounds like a baaad idea.
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- but this also has a flip side: being the weirdo I am, the idea of hiding your real world identity online keeps lingering within me. and that sometimes feels wrong when you’re already an adult and see your coworkers being okay with using their real names, and heck, real photos online.
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- also, while it supposedly helped me protect me as a kid, it also caused so much unnecessary self-hate.
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  - it instilled a fear of seeing pictures of myself.
    
    I never published my own face online, so I never got much of a chance to look at my own pictures.
    
    and I don’t ever take photos of myself, because I don’t like looking at my pictures.
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    so it’s like an endless cycle of disliking the way I look.
    
    but honestly… I’m okay with that. I’ve learned to accept my face in the mirror. I don’t need it shoved everywhere I go. I’m not Aphex Twin.
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    besides, I have a cute fursona, and I’m proud of it
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    and there’s so much more to a person than just the way they look.
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© riki moe / リキ萌

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