The birth of Marjorene
I started online gaming right about when online gaming started. We are talking Diablo 1 and Duke Nukem. Command & Conquer. I am that old.
The first game I really remember playing online extensively was Starcraft. I also remember going to a store in Flint, which was a heck of a drive for me when I was 17, to buy the game. The Babbages in Flint was the only store with it in stock even remotely close to me.
I didn’t tell my mom where I was going, because she would think I’d be murdered in Flint. I was not murdered in Flint. The people in the mall in Flint were super nice to me. I even got the Starcraft free t-shirt with purchase. This is not the first time, or the last time, my mother was wrong about something.
Anyway…Flint was great, I grabbed the game, got a hot pretzel, and drove home. I installed Starcraft, and beat the campaign. I knew my stuff. I loved playing Starcraft. Time to challenge other doofuses.
I got online via dial-up internet. Dial-up internet sucked, but we didn’t know that at the time, because all we had was dial-up internet. The first thing I had to do was pick a username. Being the young man I was, I wanted to find a username that really popped. I wanted a name that would tell my opponents who I was all about before we started base building and pounding each other into the sand. It had to be funny, it had to have an edge. I chose…
Momdoer
I put Momdoer in a large headline because I am very proud of this name.
Like Mom-Do-er. A guy who does moms. My friends found this hilarious. I would sometimes get compliments in-game from my opponents praising my name. I’d like to think if you run into a Momdoer online? That person was probs inspired by me, or at least the kid of someone who was inspired by me.
When Microsoft launched Xbox LIVE, I was all about it. I logged in and immediately created my Momdoer account. I was so proud. I gamed as Momdoer on the original Xbox right up until the Xbox 360. I was owning people in Halo 2 and Project Gotham. I was doing moms and taking names.
Then, one day, I logged onto my Xbox and Microsoft presented me with a warning screen informing me that my name was offensive. I had to change it. They would not charge me for the process of changing my name, but it had to go. Someone, somewhere, took time out of their schedule to complain about me. Momdoer is too offensive to the people screaming about sexual orientation and race relations on Xbox Live? This does not seem fair. I felt a lot of feelings.
However, Microsoft went to the bathroom on my feelings, and I had to change it. I was still younger, and I liked Butters from South Park, so I named my character Butters24601. The 24601 was from Les Misérables. Jean Val Jean’s prisoner number. I thought that was sooooo clever. It was not clever. But it stayed my username on Xbox Live. I kept it as my username on the PlayStation Network, too.
A little while after the Momdoer banning on Xbox, I started playing World of Warcraft on PC. I knew Momdoer would not fly. And you cannot use numbers in your user name, so the genius of Butters24601 was out, too. So…I made a Troll Priestess and named her Sindy. Also a dumb name. What made it worse was people would talk over the mic and call me Sindy. I am not even sure if these people knew my name. Sindy, go stand under the dragon. Sindy, give me a fortification buff. Sindy, stay out of the fire. I hated that name. But I could not change it, as everyone knew me and I got invited to do cool things in-game with other cool people.
The coolness of any of the things we did, or the people we did them with, can very much be questioned in 2024.
I finally got sick of my Troll Priestess, and started fresh on a new server. No way I was sticking with the Sindy name, as it sucked. I decided to go with another South Park name: Marjorine. It was Butters’ alter ego when he dressed up like a girl to infiltrate the girl group. I always chose women characters because ladies are pretty. Yet I am a dude. Kind of like Marjorine on South Park. A gentleman in disguise. My genius knew no bounds.
So, anyway, I went to change my Playstation Network name to Marjorine, but some other asshat had taken it. I went with Marjorene. I do most of my game playing on the Playstation, so my name is Marjorene on everything else going forward.
I have used this name for a long time online. It is now the name of my blog. The end.
