Names

All feralculture.com users are asked to use a real sounding name as their display name. Accounts with obviously fictitious names may be deleted or deactivated. By “real sounding name”, we mean either your own actual, personal name, or a name that at least looks like it could belong to a real person. No names of celebrities, historical figures, or fictional characters. No cleverish nicknames like “Feral Faun” or “Wild Tendress”. No joke names like “Hugh Jass” (huge ass) or “Mike Hunt” (eh hem). No names with embedded numbers or punctuation like “M@ry H8” or “Joseph_Smith”. No names of companies, even if it is yours.

We have joked about creating an anarcho-primitivist-permaculturist name generator that mixes animal names with plant names, and we understand some of the inspiration underlying this tendency. However, we ask that you please refrain from using a name that sounds a little too close to that thing where white people make up indian names (whatever ethnicity or skin tone you may or may not identify with). Good examples come to mind, but we simply ask that you use your own aesthetic sense, and if you push the cheeseball name line, we may ask you to change it.

This does not mean that if your formal name is Isaac Silberschwartz that you cannot use “Isaac Silver”. You can even use an initial or initials for the first or last name if you like (but not both, and this is is subject to change).

It is possible that you are uncomfortable about using your real name on the web. This happens. In that case, feel free to display a pseudonym or nom de plume. Just make it look like it could be real. And if you do use a fictitious name, don’t announce that it is fictitious. We want to encourage use of real names as much as possible here, toward the goal of building face-to-face connections, and ask that you help with that goal.

If you are currently using an account that uses an inappropriate alias, you may be able to change this by editing your profile.

We understand some cultures do not use a “first name and last name”. If you are from such a culture, we would humbly ask you to help build a new culture here.

We hope that the value of participating in the feralculture community is worth following this rule.