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.

It's a abbreviated version of the name of my multi-national . . . well, it's just me, really . . . media corporation, LEgends, LIes, and LOcal History. (Pronounced Mee-Fi... I mean Lee-Lie-Low, with the accent on the first syllable.)

I thought I was making the name up, but I later realized that about five years earlier, I'd read a 1988 book called Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History, by Richard Shenkman.

A good book, by the way. Speaking of books, the first thing I ever loved about the Internet, c. 1996, was that I could sit at home and renew my books at the Bangor and University of Maine libraries, about 55 miles away.

The first thing I used a lot was a Hotmail account, starting in mid-March 1997. And abandoned in summer 2002. (That seems like a long time ago now.) In between those two dates I read about a website called MetaFilter, and after looking at it for a few weeks wondered why I hadn’t joined yet.