Nick & Chatting History

For some time now I have been a participant in IRC—the first day that I ever went on IRC was 13th of August, 1999. I know this date because I grepped my journal of 1999, and that was the first time that I start to talk about it—after that it recurs quite often. It was on a private fan-run server, where fans could get together and talk online. It was filled with mainly Americans, with the odd sprinkling of Australians from time to time.

By this time, I had been chatting online for quite a while, though not in IRC. I'd been a regular in the Lounge of the web-based chat room of FortuneCity.com, where I'd been a Neighbourhood Guide (and later, Minister, as they were called at the time. The titles have since been changed to Content Guides).

My first nick, exoticsky, was created around July 1998, and I continued to use it exclusively for ages in both FortuneCity and any other web-based chat rooms that I frequented, including SixDegrees.com and GeoCities.com; when I began to use MUDs in late 1998, I also used it, though with different capitalisation: ExoticSky. A friend of mine at the time, Kristen, was responsible for this nick, though a little indirectly. She signed up with GeoCities at the time, using exoticfire—as far as I can recall, this was the name of some cartoon or television character. I also signed up at the time with GeoCities, using skyling. I'd wanted to use SkySong, but it was already taken. Shortly afterwards, I went into a chatroom for the first time, and had to choose a nick. I didn't want to use SkySong or skyling—feeling that it was unfair to use the former because it was used by someone else already (albeit as a login), and I didn't like skyling, and to use my friend's, again, I felt a bit unethical. So, as a compromise, I put the first part of 'exoticfire' and the first part of 'skyling' together to get 'exoticsky'. I used to get the contractions of 'exotic' and 'exo' rather than the full part of my nick when chatting.

One night, when in bed, I came up with the idea for a new nick: 'a cute fuzzball'. This I began to use in FortuneCity (where by this time I was a regular around the hours from 7am-9pm AEST), along with my previous nick. I don't recall my sleepy theory behind using it, but before long, I became better known as that by most, though the older regulars could remember me by my old one also. This, as one can imagine, got contracted to 'cute' and 'fuzzy' (and sometimes, 'fuzzball'). There was one particular regular that then used to log in with the nick 'dustbuster'; this one got handed around a few times, with everyone taking turns at e-vacuuming me.

In August, when I first figured out how to IRC, I changed my nick, not feeling that 'exoticsky' or 'a cute fuzzball' (which could not fit anyhow, even hyphenated or underscored) were appropriate for a place where fen hung out. I then chose to use 'righ', which is Scottish Gaelic for 'ruler' (think ard'righ). My real name, Erika, means 'all-ruler' in Old Norse, so I thought it was a cute affectation. It was also influenced by the fact that I chose to pronounce it 'ree' (like the middle syllable of my name), though it changed later because everyone else insisted on pronouncing it 'rye'.

About the same time I began to stop going to FortuneCity chat, because the java chat took too much time for my little modem (I used to chat from university prior to getting a computer and modem at home). IRC was the way to go—I could telnet into student and then get out to an external IRC server, using ircII as a client. I became an IRC addict—not that I was not addicted to Internet Chat before, but then I used to actually go to university to do it, and got out of the house, and sometimes even went to classes. But when I got access at home, and IRC at home, I didn't move -- spent hours and hours in front of the computer. On average, I used to awake around 10am, go downstairs, go online and IRC until about 2pm, shower, then go back down to stay until around 3am. This was a ritual for most of my second semester after coming back from the WorldCon in Melbourne. I pulled a few all-nighters, just sitting on IRC.

Somewhere around late November or early December, I changed my nick slightly; put a prefix onto it and changed capitalisation. I put 'Owl' onto it, and became 'OwlRigh'. This caused a few problems, considering that there were already two people with nicks containing 'owl': 'Owlet' and 'Nightowl'. Owlet by this time had become scarce, and Nightowl came on infrequently. About a week after changing my nick, I decided to become a regular on the university IRC server. The 'Owl' prefix came because of a few reasons, being:

1. Everyone on the fan server had animal selves (ferrets, dragons, snakes, etc), and I eventually chose one to fit in,
2. I pulled late nights a lot, becoming a night person, and
3. In high school, my friends used to call me an 'owl', for being wise (shows how much they knew…).

I've been using 'OwlRigh' as a nick since late November 1999, and have not changed it since.