I’ll be honest, I’m starting to really dislike my name. Not Chris, that’s fine. I mean my gamertag, Twitch screen-name and the name I’ve been using for most of my socials in recent years – Folkedoff.
It started simple enough. I think I picked it as a gamertag when I registered a new xbox account in the xbox 360 days. I like folk music, the off is part of my surname, and yes it was a childish play on “fucked off”. That joke got old real fast once I had kids and they got old enough to read my gamertag out loud.
Also for a joke to be funny, people have to get it. No-one gets it. If I jump in a new twitch stream and hit follow or start chatting, people don’t seem to be able to parse “folkedoff”. Not just those who don’t speak English as a first language either; Americans seem to have real problems with it. Admittedly you could argue that they barely speak English as a first language either… (joking obv. after all I’m Scottish and the same could be said for many of us)
Nothing kills a pun like mangling the pronunciation, so it’s painful to hear all the variations of the name people can come up with.
As a gamertag it’s not too bad. It’s fine. But now I’m using it for everything it’s starting to bug me a lot. If it was just Twitch it might be bearable, but now I’ve tried to align my most active public socials like Threads and Instagram with Twitch, along with any Discord memberships the name feels really clunky and uncomfortable. I’m not happy with it.
So what do I do about it? I don’t know really. I guess I have to change it but I don’t know what to change it to?
If my primary focus for a name is to choose something to use for content creation – Twitch, YouTube, and socials then it should be something broad enough to cover all the content I’m creating. On Twitch I keep intending to main music, playing some folk songs and trad tunes, maybe testing out some metal and electro stuff, but it never works out like that and I spend more time streaming sim games like DCS or Flight Simulator, plus a few variety games I pick up on game pass. While folkedoff kind of fit the music theme (assuming you get the joke), it’s clunky for anything else. Then on Threads and Insta I’ll often post pics of projects I’m working on, arty experiments, Warhammer models, wildlife pics, plus all the other thoughts and nonsense that comes into my head. Lastly there’s this blog as well!
I guess I need to take some time to think up some new names and mull them over. There’s a few, including Mince and Skirlie, that I’ve used for other projects in the past that might fit but probably not really. If I switch it up I think it’ll be something new. Full rebrand!
Ideally I want something simple, easy to say, catchy, maybe a bit folky or metal, that will fit with music or gaming. I don’t really want to split things up too much into separate Twitch streams or YouTube channels. Maybe I pick something from nature, a bird name or something like a Scots name for one of my favourite birds or some other object related to my interests. There’s a lot to consider. Let me know if any of you have good ideas for picking names!
Watch this space then for the big rebrand on Twitch and socials once I’ve made up my mind!
Mince and Skirlie 
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