Sit back, dear cookie crumbs, and listen to a tale of changing times…
Back in 1994 when I first logged into Prodigy chat, I picked the username Gypsy72 after the robot from MST3K. Wait…did I write this before? Oh…I did.
Anyway, it came to my attention last month that Gypsy is slowly becoming recognized as more and more of a racial slur as the years go by. And that’s troubling. I’ve had this online persona forever in Internet years and I don’t know what to do.
I decided that for each username I have to pick from here on out, I won’t be using ladygypsy. Maybe let Yuan have it.*
Which leaves me with this site. I bought this domain in 2001. And even though I own a few other domain names that are me (including iamkimrussell.com which is cool in an “I am LEGEND!” way) I don’t know the first thing about saying “that’s me, but this is NOW me” when it comes to websites. But let’s say that in 15 more years, gypsy is just as cringe-inducing and negatively charged as the n-word is now. Even if it’s half as horrible, that’s still bad. I’d better nip this in the bud before it gets rough.
So in the future, probably before the year’s out, you’ll have to change your bookmarks/RSS feeds/carrier pigeon instructions/whatever. I’ll let you know.
*I owned that domain for a while and let it go because I realized I only bought it to spite the guy who wouldn’t sell it to me to begin with.
I’d never heard of that. Maybe I need to get out more often.
Thanks for the info, though. I will definitely update my Google Reader when you let the world know about the change.