Of the 500+ folks who emailed RSVPs for the Autumn Apotheosis Party, there was only one address that stuck in my memory: Dinosaur.Fight@gmail.com.

Who was this person? And why did I automatically assume that s/he was awesome? In a landscape of literal email addresses, Dinosaur.Fight jumped off the screen, a fang bearing smiley face. It was like seeing a stranger enter the room in a stunning outfit – again, who is s/he? So I replied to the RSVP and asked after the etymology of the address. Talena replied “”it’s actually something I’ve thought about since the advent of this internet age, never wanted to be myname@someemailaddress.com.”

Could having a unique address become a new way to create distinction in our now staid email identity?

In Web 1.0, email addresses were often combos of initials + numbers, lots of ZZZZs too. This was reflective of the new ‘techo/cyber’ aspect of things, as if we were talking to HAL 9000. (My Hotmail was MHB718)

In Web 2.0, the online space was no longer an ‘other’ or even ‘cyber’ – it was normal. And with it, we all got serious Gmail prefixes of firstname.lastname@, mirroring how we introduce ourselves in the flesh (Mine is MichaelHB). So click and brick have conflated.

Avatars, IM handles, Blogger names, etc… are now the sandbox of funny names in the www. But email? Naw, that’s serious. Nobody uses an alternate ID to RSVP for a party, especially in their own industry. Well, Talena flipped our new norms and introduced herself as Dinosaur.Fight. And now I’m writing about and linking to her. It reminds of being a kid and seeing the first pink flamingo in our neighborhood. I had no idea who lived in that house, but was sure that they were pretty damn cool.