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Evil nicks that people use on the net
by eidan yoson
published at fravia's searchlores in March 2000

Slightly edited by fravia+

This is quite interesting. Often enough the only thing you have about one of the "entities" you encounter on the web, is the nick he has chosen. Thus the primordial question must be: why did he choose that nick and not another? "Evil" nicks apart, the fact that people move around with a specific nick could be of some significance when trying to gather data about them. This is of course not new: I remember some old studies: those king of medieval Mercia, "Cheorl" and "Pybba", that were related with those later "Karl" and "Pippin", acting as "Mayor of Palace" in meroving times. And why does a good friend of mine use the nick Greythorne? And why there are so many "evil" nicks around? Web-Searching, Web-Sociology, Stalking lores, "Falsehood cracking"... Enjoy!

"Evil nicks the people use in the net "

by eidan yoson

In our statistical world, where god plays dice with subatomic particles, one should await that the distribution for the nicks should be coherent with the abundance of real names. It should be probable to observe some overloaded nicks like johnsmith_xxxxxx@yahoo.com, where xxxxxx is a six digits number, and other few very singular ones like AstridPrzepiorKa@hotmail.com . However this is not verified by the facts. On the contrary, a remarkable proportion of somber and wild, when not "demoniac" nicks exists (and develop) in the internet underground environment. A similar notable phenomenon can be seen in the heavy rock bands, not linked to names but to attitudes. They like to use black costumes, chains (supposedly to hit other people), skulls tattooed in their bodies and a great quantity of other accessories and icons to stigmatize theirselves as "heavy" (you can read "raging", "violent" or "dangerous") people. It is clear that rock groups, besides the music are selling their "hard" image, while in the case of a hacker, cracker or other web-inhabitant, indipendently from the content of its words and thoughts, the nick becomes over time a very important component of his self-presentation.

You may have a look here if you want to see some very illustrative examples of evil nicks "taken from the wild".

I didn't found (surprisingly) any nick "DiOcLeXiAn" or so. It is easy to deduce numerologicaly that the name of this emperor corresponds to "the beast whose number is 666": let us abbreviate (maybe something capriciously) such a name as DCLXVI (= Di.C.L.eX.U.I), and we see that it corresponds with descending Roman numbers: D=500 + C=100 + L=50 + X=10 + V=5 + I=1 = 666 It is comprehensible that nobody has never used this name: too elaborated. To avoid other people take that highly ellaborated nick as yet another nonsense handle, undoubtedly any communication from the nick's owner should have been preceded with a mail explaining its meaning, else people could name him as "that fool luser with a ridiculous imperial nick" .

WHAT'S ABOUT ME? What "eidan yoson" stands for? it is apparent for any spanish speaker -less so for non spanish speakers- that reversing my nick one can attain "no soy nadie" (I'm nobody). In the book -and movie- The Exorcist, Raggs (the girl possessed by devil), answer "eidanyoson" when father Karras ask for her name, because it is supposed that the devil can speak backward. In a similar manner, a reverser should have a diabolical "touch" when making the programs work "better" or at least in a way opposite to what the programmer thought.

SECOND WAVE, THIRD WAVE In the early times of the hacking and cracking, the fashion for demoniac nicks was a lot more emphasized. Together whit unfriendly handles (jack the ripper, Silentium Mortem) there were names with the intent to scare anyone to death like Legion of Lucifer, Dare Devil or Evil Mind.

When arriving the second wave, and people passed from the local bbs to a world-wide net, this tendency has been moderated a lot . People began to use vandal names like Whipper, Razor or Fatality, no longer choosing names with "full" wickedness.

The Windows OS managed the third wave simplifying and fooling everything around. No more those primitive keyboards, that ugly DOS or Unix case-sensitive command lines: the funny mouse driven GUI marks the "cool nicks" era. Who wouldn't agree? A happy interface for the happy "postmodern" society, where evil was thrown outside (outside the central and powerful nations, a beauty theme for a future essay: to show how satan still dwells in all the rest of the world).

Anyway, WinNuke is far enough to accomplish dirty tasks. No more command line pings nor fingers (and I wonder if it is good or not), there is not necessity for threatening nicks, it has been demonstrated that any idiot can do a SYN or DDOS attack, be his nick Pamela or Belzebub. In summary: a threatening nick no longer indicates a supposed skill, and I doubt whether even in the past was a good indication of a power user.

This trend did help to diminish the current proportion of evil nicks, which have fallen below 20% in the hacker community, even though this value is still greater than the statistical value that we can expect.

LET US BE SERIOUS Erwing Goffman (The presentation of self in everyday life), a great expert on human behavior said: "...In this way, the individual develops his identity or persona as a function of interaction with others, through an exchange of information that allows for more specific definitions of identity and behavior".

Have you perused the above? the developing of identity is said to be a FUNCTION that let us define any specific, default behavior and identity for the others. The name, lacking other data, can be an excellent hint when prejudicing a stranger's behavior. People expect to handle with a "fine and gentle girl" if her nick is Laura Ingalls and with an awful "criminal" if the guy's nick is Himmler. This opens the door for many possibilities: just think how you could use this simple trick to influence positively, or prejudice your targets (oh yes, admittedly it isn't my discovery).

Hugh Miller (The Presentation of Self in Electronic Life) has noted that Goffman's thoughts deals only marginally with the new internet based communications:

"Much of Goffman's interest is in his analysis of the depth and richness of everyday interaction. This depth and richness is perhaps not apparent in electronic interaction, but the problem of establishing and maintaining an acceptable self remains". Again, one can establish the "primarian" impression he wants to give by means of his nick, - and it is very important to do this well - no matter how shallow the internet communications are.

And what image wants to give a person that voluntarily chooses a satanic nick? Undoubtedly he/she wants to scare people (should work for simple souls). See, if you are compelled to walk trhough a narrow pass filled with dangerous snakes, you may ease your courage and ameliorate your chances painting your back and loin with the colors of the most poisonous viper, the old "black/yellow stripes" trick, to fool others into thinking they should "beware this beast". Reciprocally, use a soft nick and you will be treated as a chest baby: another sucker inside the deep net.

This reminds me the national rugby team of New Zeland, the "All Blacks" that put on makeup the face, gets dressed in black, and perform a ritual dance at full scream, everything with the purposed aim of scaring to death their opponents. That works! They are also very good - possibly the best in the world - and almost always win. In a similar manner, many warriors made the same thing along history, and without going farther, one decade ago in my dear Argentine some military guys tried to scare the civilians by painting their faces and bringing out their tanks in the streets. Fortunately they failed. The hooligans enjoy playing the role of fierce gang in the soccer stadiums around the world, and you can see them characterized as brave warriors although behind such fierce disguise there is nothing more than - say - a milk deliverer, an office employee or a corrupt agent.

The nick is very important in establishing an internet personality. Nomen est omen! Many times mankind has attributed extraordinary power to the name of people. The North America's ancient inhabitants had - among many other civilizations - the belief that if somebody knew the name of a person, it also possessed that person's spirit, being able to kill him or to dominate him by means of magic rites. For this reason, instead of their true names they used nicknames.

In the internet realm, an individual establishes a facade (a "front" in Goffman's words) by communicating his/her name to others. The facade acts as vehicle of standardization, allowing the other ones to understand the individual on the base of the projected (standard) features of character that have a normative meaning. What is looked for when one set an evil nick, is to establish a channel and method for vertical communication, with the threatening character always up and far, unreachable and dominant.

As Sherry Turkle stated (Life in screen: the age of internet), the internaut "...spends his/her time constructing a life thas is more expansive that the one he/she lives in physical reality". We agree but adding that such expansion is achieved at the expense of other people's possibilities or freedom.

These techniques are successful with those that are guided by the appearances or too fearsome to think a bit. But for us, (desirous to become) reality crackers, that attitude is clearly perceptible and compensable (we should speak about falsehood cracking instead than reality cracking). However, it is just a facade and usually behind a threatening nick is just hidden an incompetent apprentice. True crackers and hackers, should never need to make other notice that they can be REALLY hard when they want.

eidan yoson

EXAMPLES OF EVIL NAMES

1. +HCU team: basilisk, mammon, A+heist, +MaLaTTiA (illness) Insider+betraying, <predator>, Pantheon, iNCuBuS++, The Undertaker

2. RingZ3ro team: D4eMoN(yes, he take it from Unix daemons, but evil anyway!) , Kill3xx,

3. 40HEX magazine staff and collaborators: Hellraiser, bionic slasher, dark slayer, Death Angel, NuKE, Apache Warrior, Demogorgon

4. F.U.C.K Magazine staff and collaborators: disorder, jericho, Chemical Persuasion, Ionic Destruction, Dungeon Sys, PuRe EViL, Logikal Nonsense, Purple Hell, Deadly Intoxication.

5. FEH magazine staff and collaborators: ReDragon, antichrist, bedlam, blackdeath, blackfire, cerbus, chaos, crimelord, crushed puppy, datarape, deathstar, dragonlady, drmenace, hellfire, kurupt, mafiaman, malice, mindcrime, mindscrew, (listed interrupted nearly one half to avoid boring in excess).

6.- Others

Legion of Doom Doom Prophet, Phantom Phreaker

Legion of Lucifer DarkMage, Silentium Mortem

Cult of Dead Cow: Wasted Pandemonium, The Dark Static, The Omen, Boards in CdD: The Dead Zone, Demon Roach

Other people Phantom Phreaker(phrack), DareDevil (PHUN), Evil Mind (PHUN)

links in +Malattia: Demoniz, The death star, Rigor Mortem, Association of Satanic Maniacs, Mammon, Lord Lucifer, iNfERNo

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eidan yoson