Imitation is Flattering

[Zinjanthropos]

Totally by accident today I discovered someone else has copied my username on another forum. I have had this username for at least 15 years, started on the Discovery Forum. Not the first time I've seen it spelled exactly as I do and I've seen different variations and abbreviations over the years. The forum is the iAudiophile Forum where people talk about JP3 players, whatever the hell they are? Apparently someone used my username to join in Dec 2011. Hey I'm flattered but I'm questioning the ethics of this im-poster. What's there to gain?

[stryder]

I had something similar occur with my full username. Originally online searching it would return pretty much anything and everything I ever did using it (it's got more of a footprint than my real name), then slowly but surely I started spotting it appearing on forums I'd never been to. I concluded that a scraperbot had likely visited somewhere I posted and lifted the name to make the user-account look more authentic for spamming from.

Welcome to the forum.

[Zinjanthropos]

I had something similar occur with my full username.  Originally online searching it would return pretty much anything and everything I ever did using it (it's got more of a footprint than my real name), then slowly but surely I started spotting it appearing on forums I'd never been to.  I concluded that a scraperbot had likely visited somewhere I posted and lifted the name to make the user-account look more authentic for spamming from.

Welcome to the forum.

Thanks for the welcome. I'm positive I've seen your username before on science forums. Believe it or not there was a guy on the old Discovery Forum who actually got my name in the Urban Dictionary. I think he/she thought it was defamatory in nature but I look at it as a compliment of sorts.