MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

“Angus McWetboy” was my nom de plume during my graduate school days, when I first went online: I published a silly e-mail newsletter for the history graduate students at the University of Waterloo in which “Angus” was a recurring character. The name meant nothing in particular (other than a vague notion that anything Scottish was inherently funny), just a few syllables that, when combined, sounded good and silly (at least to me). “Angus” was a madman who obsessed about imported cheese products from faraway places, and the insect pests that infiltrated his stocks. (Cheese weevils. Tajikistan. Long story. Made no sense. I was full of a lot more beans back then.) Most of my colleagues didn’t get him at all, and actually asked me to tone down the newsletter before it got them into trouble with their professors.

Later on, I thought it was unique and meaningless enough for e-mail addresses and, eventually, my domain name; then a friend told me that the phrase “wet boy” has some really obscure kinky fetishist connotations. Er. Um. Oh dear. Well, I’m stuck with it now. (It’s not like it’ll raise too many eyebrows around here: Exhibit A; Exhibit B; Exhibit C.)

Projects of mine that have gotten posted to MetaFilter:
• The Map Room (posted here on July 9, 2003)
• DFL (posted here on August 23, 2004)
• Snakes on Film (posted here on September 27, 2006)