When I got my first e-mail account and started poking around online in March of 1996, I went by “Fahrvergnugen” wherever I went. It was the buzzword from a Volkswagen advertising campaign (One which was already defunct by that time, I think) but it suited my purposes at the time. I hoped that it would convey my general interest in all things VW, and that I would meet many other Volkswagen fans online and we could share our ridiculous air-cooled obsessions. I also felt that it was pleasantly asexual and so I wouldn’t get too many Creepy Internet Dudes trying to “netsex” me. Because I’d heard that if you let ’em know you were a girl, it was like blood on the water to a shark. Pervs lurk, you know.
I had e-mail through the college which I accessed with a PINE browser, and sometime during the summer of 98, I subscribed to a web-based mail service at theglobe.com, a site which went under in the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758. Or the economy collapse of 2001, whichever. At that point, mail.com, which was recommended by the admins of theglobe.com, became my mail service. But while I was still at theglobe.com. I had a website. It was a badly-executed thing made with their “webpage builder” consisting of a few pictures of my car, one of me doing my Cornholio impression, and a couple of pictures of the 1880s dress that I’d made in the 98-99 school year. Around this time, I encountered my first online journal was Gwen Zepeda’s “Gwentown” subtitled “I am a trailer-trash housewife and I bet you’re jealous” or something very like that. Back then, she wrote hilariously of the hijinks of her three small boys, and heart-wrenching about the realizations of her growing unhappiness in marriage. I didn’t know it, but I was looking at one of the pioneers of online journaling, what has now become “blogging.” I just thought she had a “homepage” with a very extensive and frequently updated “About Me” page.
My first online journal was hosted at Diaryland.com. I wrote there, sporadically, from 2001-2003, then started a Livejournal account. I wrote as ornery_chick at livejournal from 03 until the end of this past summer, when I signed up for a WordPress account and decided to use a fine family name, Meetzorp, as my handle. Most of what was ever written on my old Diaryland journal (which vanished without a trace in a Diaryland crash a few years ago) and the still-existing Livejournal account has been imported to this shiny WordPress journal.
Since 1997, I’ve been known variously as
Fahrvergnugen (ISCA BBS, Hissyfit, 3WA, theusuals) 1997-present
As You Like It (thefashionspot, BikeForums) (2003-present)
ornery_chick (LiveJournal, Earthriders, Flickr) (2003-present)
Meetzorp (hello-online, here) (2006-present)
I think that covers all the names I’ve ever used on the internet, except that I’m now known as MichelleD over at Earthriders, because it made more sense to be known by my real name, since I’m chatting amongst people who know me In Person. Oh, and my Yahoo ID is Fahrv1959, again referencing a car I haven’t driven in something like 5 years. Nutty.