Obligatory “not today” disclaimer: actually fucked up over two decades ago, but found out today.

At the dawn of theinternet, I made an account on imgur. I figured (correctly) that I wasn’t going to use it often enough for the username to matter much, so I just went with the first part of my email adress and a number four times.

Turns out that there is such a thing as nazi number code and it’s never a good idea to use an even number of 8s for usernames when you’re not a nazi.

TL;DR: Didn’t know about nazi code, accidentally selected an imgur username ending with the equivalent of a double Hitler salute

  • Xanthrax@lemmy.world
    18·
    1 year ago

    Same. I used my school username “1831942”. Later, I found out that was the date the American Nazi party was founded…

    • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
      14·
      1 year ago

      You get a lot more wary of that sort of stuff if you are the kind of person who white supremacists like to harass. I think 88 by itself is probably not too suspicious, but if anyone has 1488 you are dealing with a real piece of shit.

        • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
          22·
          1 year ago

          I literally gave you context but good for you that you don’t need to think about these things. Not everyone can feel so safe and comfortable when extremist symbols start to pop up. It is “just a number” and “just a symbol” and “just a joke” until you are surrounded by extremists calling for the heads of those who they hate.

            • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
              9·
              1 year ago

              Like they say, is it paranoia if they are really going after you? We aren’t at a point this is speculative anymore. I have seen people parading in nazi paraphernalia. Just this week in my country a teacher got assaulted and threatened at gunpoint by a cop for reprimanding his son for doing a nazi salute.

              I’m a bisexual man. I see how hate movements have successfully codified their persecution of trans people into law in many places around the world, and how they are already moving to attack gay people, women and people of color.

              There’s no escaping the stress if this sort of stuff ends up affecting me and the people I care about. The stress might be the least of the problems.

              Frankly I don’t know how you can exist on the internet and remain entirely oblivious to how hate movements have gained momentum lately. It’s not a question of whether it’s going to happen, just seems like you are lucky not to get affected by it.

              • ReCursing@kbin.social
                9·
                1 year ago

                The tool posts to a community called “conservative”, and makes vaguely dogwhistle posts. Odds are they’ve never had a thought they weren’t told to think in their life

                • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
                  8·
                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, I see now how they are posting about DeSantis and defending the loss of rights of LGBTQ+ parents in Italy.

                  I was trying to discuss in good faith but here we have an example of how even this supposedly unconcerned neutral sort of talk is used with partisan intent. So what can one expect from outright nazi symbols?

                • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
                  8·
                  1 year ago

                  You are showing your whole ass here. just spewing blatantly false and off-topic conservative fearmongering right after lying about how you don’t worry about hate movements. Now it’s clear why, you are part of one.

                  But just not to leave your bulshit unanswered

                  1. The only people mutilating minors are intolerant parents and doctors who force intersex children to conform to binary sexes before they are old enough to make decisions for themselves. Children are not prescribed surgery. At most, trans kids get fully reversible puberty blockers to prevent the irreversible, deeply distressing effects that the wrong puberty would have on them. Which is the recomended treatment approved by medical organizations.

                  This whole argument of yours also reeks of “gay men have the same rights to marry a woman”. Different people in different situations have different needs. Cisgender kids also get treatment for precocious and anomalous puberties, and nobody complains about that.

                  1. Extreme right politicians have been gaining proeminence and pushing for persecution of minorities in the US, where I live in Brazil and all over the world. Whether they are under the label “nazi” or just act like them is a minor semantic distinction, but it sure doesn’t help when they dress up like them and repeat their talking points verbatim (like a former Secretary of Culture in my country). If that’s not enough for you the growing popularity of Alternative für Deutschland in Germany is as close as literal nazis as you’ll find. Not to mention when they start talking about jewish people too.

                  And it’s interesting the similarities between the current fearmongering against LGBT people with the nazi’s own use of that, with the talk of “seduction of the youth”. It’s worth remembering that the nazi infamous book burns started with an institute that researched sexuality, including topics about gay and trans people. Like they say, history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes.

                  1. The internet is definitely full of lies and edgy kids saying outrageous stuff for a laugh, but one thing that has become abundantly clear over the years is that many people are getting radicalize to either mean it for real, or to be willing to take the “joke” so far as to ruin people’s lives, which is effectively identical. Yeah, a lot of people are lying, including they ones saying that they are just joking about it.

                  Politics and laws are already being actively affected by online extremism. It would be at best complete obliviousness pretending nothing being said matters, but at this point it’s clear you are actively trying to deceive and gaslight, because you spelled out that you are for the persecution, and that’s why you were soooo unconcerned by it.

            • ougi@lemmy.world
              14·
              1 year ago

              My biggest worry is my town not getting road construction done in a timely manner.

              This comes across as privileged, not insightful

      • aeternum@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        The countries with the highest milk consumption also have the highest levels of osteoporosis. Plus the cows are important.

        • techbits@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          I wasn’t going to mention this but yes, the evidence is pretty conclusive. There is also evidence that suggests you lose calcium if you drink milk. The entire agenda of milk=calcium was produced by big farm.

  • CarterH@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    15·
    1 year ago

    I did the exact same thing. I’ve been using the name for decades and recently found out about this. My initial reaction was, “Fuck them. I’ve had this username for years and I’m not gong to change it just for them.” Unfortunately, while I know that it isn’t related to them, no one else does. It sucks that they get to take possession of it like that but I prefer the inconvenience of changing usernames over the mistaken association with that shit, so I changed the ones I could and abandoned the ones I couldn’t.

  • Zikeji@programming.dev
    11·
    1 year ago

    My randomly assigned 4 digit discriminator on Discord back when I joined was “1488”. Didn’t know it was a Nazi calling card until one of the members in the community I was participating in tried to get me banned over it.

    Fortunately it only took a month or so with Discord support to get them to change it. I contemplated buying nitro so people wouldn’t think I was a nazi lol.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      1 year ago

      I know that’s not the definition being referred to, but it being called a discriminator is tragically hilarious in this case 😁

    • Permafrost@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      holy shit lmaooo would be one hell of a tactic to earn money: “pay us money or we’ll make you look like a nazi”

    • JohnSaveourSocks@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      Why the fuck would they ban you over a DISCRIMINATOR??? YOU LITERALLY CAN"T CONTROL IT, IT IS DECIDED BY THE DISCORD PROGRAM!!

  • Klear@lemmy.world
    9·
    1 year ago

    I go by Klear these days, but originally picked King Klear as a nick, since I liked Shakespeare and Serious Sam. Obviously.

    Anyway, there’s someone out there taking my name on certain sites, so I use KKlear as a backup. I’m always joking that I don’t know what I’d do if KKlear was taken as well…

    • Karjapuskuri@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 year ago

      In my country we have a chain of stores owned by the K-group, the K comes from ‘Kesko’. The used to have small, medium and large stores. The small ones were one K stores, mediums were two K stores and the large ones were three K stores. I shit you not, there used to be huge lighted signs outside the large ones that read ‘KKK-Supermarket’. You can find pictures of these on the internet still.

  • fische_stix@kbin.social
    8·
    1 year ago

    United States federal ambulance regulations got the unfortunate designation of “KKK” (edition *a, b, c, d etc). So now when I search for information for both compliance and product purchasing I have to figure out a way to enter things into a search engine that won’t get them blocked at work or get me on a list I don’t want to be on. Recently the term triple k has been usable but a lot of products still start with the three letters and then their model number, worse yet many have a space between the three letters and the number.

  • salt@lemm.ee
    6·
    1 year ago

    my brother’s email ends in ‘88’ because it’s his fav number. he likes it because it looks like two sideways infinity symbols. he’s had his email too long and it used it for too many accounts to (easily) switch to a new one. so you’re not the only one lol

    • NewEnglandRedshirt@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      My birthday is 8/18 (18.8 if you aren’t in North America), so I have a few accounts that end 818. I legit had someone ask me, in all seriousness, if I was an idiot nazi who screwed it up.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.worldOP
        2·
        1 year ago

        That reminds me of a t-shirt a Danish comedy metal band put out which, translated to English, says

        “Club 664: the satanic cult for stupid people” 😁

  • platysalty@kbin.social
    5·
    1 year ago

    Ehh, then a lot of Chinese people are nazis. We love the number 8. I’ve got 88’s in some user names.

    Also bonus cause I’m born in 1988

    • howrar@lemmy.ca
      5·
      1 year ago

      My city has a Chinese grocery store that’s just called 88. It’s considered a lucky number.

  • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldM
    4·
    1 year ago

    My username has absolutely nothing to do with drugs, but everyone thinks I’ve done crack. Never tried cocaine in any form.

      • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldM
        3·
        1 year ago

        LOL nothing of the sort. I first started using this alias when Quake 2 came out, and I joined a clan called “Crack”. I was [Crack]Happy (because I’m such a happy guy) and I just kept using it elsewhere.

          • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldM
            2·
            1 year ago

            Because we were all crack shots. It was a quake competitive team, and headshots from long distances while rocket jumping were a pre-requisite for even being considered.

  • popemichael@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    Having a regretful username is something I experienced too.

    Back in the late 90s, I used the nickname my girlfriend at the time gave me: “loverboy” (We were both 80s music fans, etc)

    It turns out that was something very NAMBLA-y

    When I discovered the issue, quickly switched it all over to my current username.

      • popemichael@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        That may be me, too. I’m from Long Island, named Michael, and technically a pope in the Discordian belief system.

        I’m just shocked that more people haven’t taken my specific username. I only encountered in twice. Once with steam, and once with twitter.

          • popemichael@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            It’s a belief system with the “holy book” being The Principia Discordia

            It was written in 1957 by Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst).

            For the most part, it describes a Discordian’s relationship with society, Eris, and a Discordian’s relationship with Eris. It also covers the basics of the POEE denomination of Discordianism.

            While it comes off as satirical, absurdist, and insane, a lot of people use the meaning behind the satire to find meaning in life.

            Some of the most important teachings involve seeing that life is 100% about perspective. Where everything can be right, even the wrong things depending on the perspective of the individual. So that can mean that all religions are simultaneously right and wrong at the same time.

            A lot of Chaosists, like myself, also use Eris as a godhead of our belief systems as Chaos can be seen as the ultimate constructive and destructive force.