The tale of trueberryless

On a sunny day in the summer of 2022, I decided to take the first step of a journey I still do not know the end of. I decided that in order to make my dreams of creating a unique identity come true, I would need a recognizable identifier. Back then, identifier meant username to me, so I started looking for a short, abstract username that was guaranteed to be available on all the major asocial media platforms1.

If you have a more or less common first and last name like mine - Felix Schneider - finding a starting point for something like this is harder than one might think. On the one hand, I wanted to create an identifier abstract enough so I would love it throughout different phases of life. This means it can't include information about something I enjoyed only at the time. On the other hand, it should ideally have some connection that bound it to me without revealing my identity to prevent my username from growing distant from me.2

Since I couldn't think about anywhere to start, I decided to pick one random English word that I have a personal connection with, while the term is so broad that tracing it back to the origin is almost impossible, while also being of no use to others: berry. I'll let you guess in the comments what connection this term has for me. Correct answers will be approved.3

Having some form of foundation is important. I believe creativity evolves from randomness, so this was the best approach I could think about. Now that both requirements were met, I needed to focus on uniqueness. People on the internet had already been creative for many years before I showed up, which meant that a lot of creations I came up with along this tiny journey were already taken on some platforms. And I had to cross-check every combination on every platform because I was not aware that there are websites that check it for you on all major asocial media.

I came up with a decent number of prefixes and suffixes, which would not add any personal information and are essentially completely meaningless - further ensuring anonymity. As you probably already figured out by now, the prefix true and the suffix less were among them.

And this is the whole unspectacular story about my little journey to create a unique, anonymous identifier across the internet: trueberryless.

Yes, that's what I like to call them, given how our brains have devolved with their presence.

As my personality changed over the years, the latter requirement has been neglected now and then, which diverged from the original idea of anonymity and often resulted in a casual reveal of my personal identity behind the username. Nonetheless, I am still very proud of my unique creation.

Note that this was, of course, not my first random word. I had to try several combinations of prefixes and suffixes together with the "connection word" until I was happy with it.