It’s that time of year again. School is back in full gear, students are strapping in for the year ahead. For seniors, this means many things, including one of the most important back-to-school traditions: changing your Facebook name.
Come early September, it doesn’t take long before your entire newsfeed is filled up with names of people you don’t recognize. These social media disguises used to be thought of as a way to go incognito from colleges checking out profiles of their applicants, but according to this year’s seniors, it’s more a part of all the senior fun.
“It’s definitely a right of passage,” says Annie Cooperstone ’13, or as she’s known on Facebook, “Betty Brown.” “Colleges don’t have time to peruse through the Facebook pages of thousands of applicants—it’s inconsequential whether or not they can find you because they aren’t looking.”
So how exactly do people come up with these names? Isabel Gasway ’13 went with “Gas Station,” a name that she says goes along with all of the jokes people make about her last name. However, some others opted for a more unidentifiable alias, many of which have unique stories behind them.
Annie Cooperstone based her name “Betty Brown” off of a character from the book Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. “It’s just supposed to be a generic “alter-ego,” she says.
Other seniors have similarly based their names off a funny memory. “I changed my name to Badelle Noginstine because Badelle is a nickname of mine and people always seem to get my last name wrong,” said Danielle Honigstein ’13. “Once I got a piece of mail that had spelled my last name Noginstine, and I thought it was really funny so that’s what I changed my last name to!”
Ryan Moran, formerly known to the Facebook community as “Foodle Bajesus” got his Facebook name idea from freshman year, when he put his swimming clothes in a locker with that name on it. His most recent name is “Llord Wrecker.” “Everyone should be anticipating my next name,” he says.
These are only some of the creative yet puzzling Facebook names that have appeared all over newsfeeds everywhere, only to be gone once the acceptance letters start arriving. But for now, “It’s a fun senior thing to do,” says Isabel Gasway ’13.
