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Sexual deviant, attention whore or just plain sociopath? Discover what your Xbox Live name says about you

Words: Charlie Barratt, GamesRadar US

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Category: Pop Culture

Examples: IrateCartman, DTenacious, StJimmy521, GHOSTGUNDAM, Frostythebatman, Scareface neilo, Yoda 40111, Kornholio33, S1LENT H1LL, Zelda64

The possible motivations behind referencing a famous piece of pop culture - be it a movie, TV show, comic book, musical group or even videogame - are many.

Emulation is one reason. Rather than pretending to be a murdering madman, a legendary lover or an adored animal, players choose to embody the essence of a character or celebrity. Cartman and Scarface don't take guff from anyone and neither do they!

Or is it a blatant bid for popularity and acceptance? By associating themselves with something they know to be extremely well liked, gamers hope to be automatically lumped together with the "cool kids." Even obscure references are carefully constructed to receive approval... in this case, from the cultural elite who are hardcore enough to understand them.

Dr. Frederiksen: "Conformity is a common theme in many pop references. The gamer is expressing his or herself by identifying with a pop icon. Oddly enough, even the reference to characters that symbolize non-conformity or rebellion can be a type of conformity itself."

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80 Comments

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lynx987 - 1 year 2 months ago

mines cky18200..........what does that mean

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abovedefault - 1 year 2 months ago

good article. Not completely right on the leetspeak one though. Ever heard of fatal1ty?

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PopeRocket - 1 year 1 month ago

^I agree. A lot of people use 'leetspeak' to get names that are not available when spelled correctly.

Now.. I will give 1 Internets to whoever can figure out where my tag comes from.

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MyGameName - 1 year 1 month ago

although it's not a LIVE gamertag but a PSN tag, what does mine fall into?

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Sizzler - 1 year 1 month ago

Pope, yours is from the Pope's hat? I don't know.

Lynx, yours is the Pop Culture refrence, because you used CKY, or the band "Camp Kill Yourself" (Better known as CKY)

And, WH47 D0 Y0U M34N 13375P34K!?

Also, mine is GOING to be Sizzler. And I don't see the refrence there. It stemmed from "SIZZLERSPERSONALPIKACHU" which I put for my Nsider username because I was going to Sizzlers that day, and I had to do something Nintendo related. I was also craving a personal pizza. I'm actually disgusted with what the name actually MEANS though, because, who would do such a cruel thing to suck a cute little electricity mouse?

So would it be Pop Culture?

But the name is just Sizzler. That could also fit under Sexual. Or, if you were thinking of melted flesh resulting from a flamethrower, that could fit into the Violence one. My first name is the CAPS category.

So which one? I need help.

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