The other day, I was trying to sign up for this new online thing. You know how it is, you find something cool, you want to jump in and see what it’s all about.
So, I get to the part where you pick your username, your profile name. Easy, right? I always use my go-to handle, something I’ve used for years. Typed it in. Bam! “Too long.” Or “Exceeds character limit.” You get the idea.
Seriously? In this day and age? I just stared at that little red error message for a second. It felt like the computer was personally judging my choice of identity, the name I’d carefully picked out ages ago.
So, the chopping block came out.
First, I did the obvious thing. Just lopped off the end. My cool, long name suddenly looked like it got run over by a lawnmower. It just didn’t feel right at all. It was like wearing a t-shirt that was three sizes too small, you know? Totally awkward.
Then I thought, “Okay, maybe initials?” But my initials just spell out something boring, or worse, something that sounds silly if you say it out loud. That wasn’t going to work. I wanted people to get a vibe from my name, not just stare at some random letters and wonder what they meant.
I even tried taking out vowels, like you see some people do to make things shorter. My name just turned into a jumble of consonants. It was unreadable. My cat could have typed something better by just walking across the keyboard. Not the impression I wanted to make.
Figuring out a compromise.
I sat there for a bit, just thinking. What’s the core of my name? What part actually means something to me, or gives the right feel? I realized there was one word, or a key part of my usual handle, that was the most important bit.
So, I started playing around with that. Shortened that main word a bit, maybe added a number or two at the end if the short version was already taken, which it often is. It wasn’t perfect, not my original glorious name, but it was… acceptable. It still felt a little bit like me, just the condensed, pocket-sized version.
It’s always a pain, this whole profile abbreviation business. You spend time building an online persona, getting comfortable with a name, and then these tiny little input boxes force you to squash it all down. It’s like they design these systems for people with super short, three-letter names and completely forget the rest of us exist.
I bet it’s always some old database somewhere, some ancient piece of code that nobody wants to touch or dares to update. “Oh, we can’t possibly change the character limit now, it might break something that was built back in 1998!” That’s probably the excuse they use in those meetings. So we’re stuck making our names fit into their old boxes.
My strategy now.
So, what I do these days is I have a mental list ready to go. My main, preferred profile name, and then a couple of pre-approved, shortened versions. Like a Plan B and Plan C for my online identity. Some are just shorter, some are a bit different but still feel like me.
It saves me the frustration of going through that whole “chop and hope” process every single time I sign up for something new. It’s not ideal, not by a long shot, but hey, you gotta adapt, right? It’s just one of those little annoyances of being online these days. You find a way to make it work and move on.
