This is what bugs the OP, hence this thread. I have other silly, trite stuff that bugs me, and so do you. We all do. In fact, it’s probably time for another mini-rant thread - get all these little pesky things off of our chests.
I don’t see a difference between it and the behaviour I see on the baseball forum I read where people have handles in the form of <Team>Fan and <Team>4Ever or giving obeisance to particularly favored players.
Ahem. I saw one of those fully-loaded, gleaming new Caddies doing fifty on the highway just the other day. It was a gorgeous, sumptuous vehicle, it was, and the elderly couple inside the car appeared to be well-to-do folks. The vanity plates on the car?
“BJ”
Okay, so maybe it was the initials of the lady or gentleman who owned the car. Maybe it was a combination of the letters of their first names, whatever. But who says seniors can’t be sexy? 
Well, if I were picking a vanity plate, I’d sure as hell give it immense forethought. 
Honestly, I don’t see the use of picking ANY name/self-advertisement dependent on something else (Valhalenrox, etc.) I’m more interested in what people are, or think of themselves, than what they think of something arbitrary (unless your whole life really WAS completely defined and occupied by worship of the Raiders…eyuch).
People can do it if they want to, though.
I hate being referred to as “Viridiano’s girlfriend” in any capacity, though.
That’s really weird. You mean, when he was born, his parents knew he was going to grow up and father a child with a certain name?
What if he decided he wanted to name his kid something else?
Just, – weird, that’s all.
Shoulda seen the car she had it on. Soccer-mom style minivan, festooned with Metallica bumper stickers. It was awsome.
I agree that you shouldn’t define yourself by your relationships with other people, but …those people do, to some extent, help you become who you are. When you have children (I’m assuming) your entire life changes. When you find “the one,” your life changes. So a chunk of you is directly that person’s fault, so to speak. I’d say a good portion of my life revolves around my boyfriend - he’s my boyfriend, my lover, my best friend, and a guy who plays video games with me. We live with each other, there’s no escaping each other. If one of us chose to define ourselves based on the other’s name, well…we did kinda have an affect on each other.
I am a lot less annoyed by names like “TashasMom” than names like “DAVIDSGURL!” though. Dunno why.
Incidentally, my name really IS Tasha, and I use this nickname (given to me by some friends) pretty much everywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever defined myself by anything other than my name, except for once I got an email address that had something like “offspringirl” in it. shrug
~Tasha
WAS HIS is clearly a lapsed Christian Fundamentalist.
My dad is from central Pennsylvania - from a very small town of almost exclusively farmers. It is an area that can be a bit…well…backward is the only word I can come up with. When my grandmother would speak of my mother, my sister, and I in the collective, we were an apostrophe and an “s” on the end of my father’s name.
It drove my mother (being from the big city of Trenton, NJ) up the wall, and I can’t say that I blame her. “Carl’s family,” would be fine. At least that acknowledges that we are separate from my father. The apostrophe-ess construction relegates us to the realm of possessions.
I know this is a bit of a hijack, but I guess what I’m getting at is that there are still parts of the country where familial relationships are still something of a defining feature.
I’m from Navarra and my usual username is apparently used by several porn stars and porn sites. No, the usual username is not “porn” per se, it’s just a female form of Alexander, but sheesh, I got sick of running into pervs.
Is defining yourself by culture and place of origin ok, or should I start calling myself The Nephew’s Godmom?
For something you’re going to show to the world, like vanity tags, and which you’re paying extra for, I think “Meg’s Mom” is dumb. For usernames… whatevah.
My grandma did the same thing and she was PA Dutch. I always thought it was weird too - “Larrys are up from Florida.” Like we were Borg or something.
That’s the most bizarre argument I’ve seen in at least half an hour of surfing the board. Why is it sad to define yourself by your relationship to someone you love and adore, but not sad to define yourself by your relationship to your fucking employer? Do you really think the former is worse than the latter? Seriously?
Obviously your personal priorities are your own, but I cannot help but think that given a choice of picking a vanity plate based on A) your kids, B) your favourite sports team, or C) your profession, (A) is as good a choice as any. I cannot see any rational explanation for why identifying yourself as a parent is worse than identifying yourself as someone who likes airplanes, or the Cowboys, or Star Trek, or what have you.
If you asked me who I am, beyond just my name, I imagine my first response would be that I’m a father. I’m also a husband, a businessman, a baseball fan, a retired soldier, a level 39 paladin on the Shadow Council server, a terrible golfer, a son, a brother, a best friend, a non-partisan moderate, a Canadian, etc. etc. But I can’t fit all of those in one nickname. So what makes “father” a worse identifier than the other ones?
My name is Rick Jones. Hence “Rick Jay.” I’m not very original.
Rick Jones? From Canada? Do you know Henry Smith? He lives in Winnipeg.
My adopted and foster kids helped chose my user name over 10 years ago and I’ve used it on various message boards and newsgroups since. That was during the height of my stay at home wife/mom days and the name fit me best during that phase of my life. Oddly enough, I mentioned to my brother a few years ago that I was ready to shed my “AdoptaMom” name and find another … he responded that I will always be AdoptaMom to real life friends, family and folks I’ve met online so I should just keep the username. He was right. Even though my full time parenting days are almost over (the last two AdoptaKids are teens now), an adoptive and foster mom will always be a part of who I am. So much so that when I bungled my original user name here on Straightdope, I came back with Adoptamom_II.
Lame in the OP’s eyes? Maybe … do I give a rats patooot? Not for much longer than it will take me to hit ENTER on this post
Adoptamom_II if you read through my posts in this thread, you’ll see that my rant does not apply to names such as yours. I said I took no issue with someone who proudly showed their status as a parent. That’s what you’ve done. What you haven’t done is labeled yourself as the object of a particular other person.
Is the distinction really that confusing?
I am on the “Nothing wrong with identifying yourself with another” side of this one. My wife has been an absolute Rock of Gibralter as a steadying influence in my life. She is legally blind. For reasons I will not go into a true guide dog is not an option right now. So I am her seenidog and proud of it. I do not feel pussy-whipped, I respect her opinion, but do not always agree with it, and do not always follow her advice, nor her mine. She is not dependant on me, she gets along quite well on her own when I am away. All in all we have kept each other from harm for more years than what I imagine a lot of the people in world have been alive. I am proud to be her husband, and am not afraid to say so. If identifying with your family and proudly saying “I am with them and they are with me” is a crime, then haul me away, because I have done it in the past and will do it again in the future. ANd I am not about to change my screen name because someone thinks it lame.
I don’t see that much of a difference between “KidsNamesMom” and “AdoptaMom”. other than the fact that I couldn’t list the 14 kids names who were living with us at the time or my username would’ve been entirely too long, so it was shortened to AdoptaMom. The kids adopted me and I adopted them, formally and informally, thus the name.
Life goes on and tomorrow we’ll find something new to bug us both
The thing that drives me crazy about the Mom2Meg type thing is…what about Meg’s little brother Sam? How’s he gonna feel when he’s older and sees family pictures that include the car, and realizes there was never a vanity plate for him? Same thing with our own kaylasdad99… is Kayla still an only child, or have you since added a baby or two who are getting completely ignored? Talk about creating some sibling rivalry!
Oh BRUTH-er!
Are you kidding me? Universally female?
Why, pray tell then, the plethora of license plates on male’s cars with such gems as “Fish On”, “SoxWin”, and the ever present and many varieties of "Hummer/Humr/Hmmmmrr, BMW/BmrOwnr/PaidCash…ad nauseum?
And before you start with the “Yeah buts” those aren’t saying Beck’sHubby etc, those ARE indicative of a man’s relationships with other people. Granted, not with JUST a single person such as wife or kid. But first and foremost his relationship with his ego and a way to show his “kills” to other males. :rolleyes:
Next his relationship with his “heros” of sports or sporting activities. But probably even more important his relationship with his career and how it affords him the opportunity to have such status symbols in the first place. And that involves relationships with many others.
Sure, it’s a bit removed and not person on person, such as your examples, but is dependent upon his relationships with others all the same (clients, coworkers, the Boss…and so on).
And in that case, imNSho, is a bit more pathetic than being proud of a close relationship such as one with your spouse or child.
It still defines you by your relationship to a person. In your case, that person just happens to be Yourself.
As others have said. I don’t think that most of these people view this as defining themselves by their relationship with another person so much as advertising what they consider the most important thing in their life.
For you, it’s your career. For many parents of children it is those children.
My license plate said “5 6 7 8”. So I’m defining myself by what I love best as well. And IMHO, it involves a relationship with others. In my case it’s LOTS of others, many students in my dance classes each semester. But even though that is my parttime job, and I have a “real” career", my impetus for choosing that particular license plate wasn’t that I was “defining” myself, but that dancing happens to be something I love.
And, I have to admit, I was always secretly amused by folks who didn’t “get it” and would ask “what does five thousand, six hundred seventy eight mean”? Even though I didn’t know that would happen before getting the license plate.
I think that the OP and others who agree are reading WAAAAAY too much into others’ motives for choosing these plates, screen names and so on.
Aha. So identifying yourself by a cool hobby, or status-y career means you’re “better” (smarter, more successful, more self award [insert adjective of your hoice here]) than those who identify themselves by their relationships with those they love?
(btw, I’ve nearly always been a career person, so I don’t have any particular “dog in the fight” of defending proud moms, I am just getting severe “us/them” vibes from the attitudes against them as displayed by some in this thread).