Why I Chose my Username

Why I chose ‘free_rip’ as my username

First off, I’ll explain the basic meanings. It’s actually a double- layered name with two completely different meanings. In the first, Rip stands for ‘rest in peace’, so death. Free stands for the freedom people sometimes see in death when in situations such as torture, starvation, or hopelessness in some totalarian societies.

The second meaning is when you ‘rip’ something onto an empty disc. Obviously, it’s illegal, but it’s also ‘free’ so many people do it. This brings in a modern element which still shows the darker side of humanity, if in a more mild way.

So, why did I choose it…

I’ve always been interested in totalarian societies and psychology. I find it intriguing the things people will do in the right circumstances, or under orders (such as the Stanford Prison experiment.) Therefore, I thought it would be good to have a username that portrays the type of desperation some people have in certain circumstances. I thought and eventually came up with the ‘rest in peace’ as people do sometimes see death as a peaceful alternative and everyone knows the saying. It then came to me that this, when shortened to it’s acronymic form, is spelt ‘rip’, which has it’s second meaning as I explained earlier.

After finding this out I became absolutely determined to find a second part to my username that would fit both meanings. There was no way I would let that go after stumbling upon it. I started thinking about why there is crime in modern society, by people with enough money to live comfortably enough already, and came up with multiple ideas. However ‘convenience_rip’ ‘status_rip’ and ‘money_rip’ just don’t have nice rings to them and neither do they fit the original meaning. Eventually, ‘free_rip’ came to me and I quickly typed it into the username field.

So, if you ever think you’re a slow writer… well, just remember I spent almost an hour coming up with seven little letters.