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Comment by pkrotich | Hacker News Reader

Your situation is apparently common nowadays with OG usernames and can get very dangerous. I had no idea this was a thing until I listened to an episode on Darknet Diaries [0] recently.

In the old days, I remember people going after short domains in the same manner. ICANN ended up adding locking (auth codes) - perhaps IG and other social sites can learn from it.

Be safe!

[0]https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/106/

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I'm not up-to-date with what OG means. Apparently OG "original gangster" usernames refer to common words such as "@Miracle", that were registered by early adopters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/style/instagram-account-f...

Or that guy @slack on Twitter. Or @gusto on same

The ultimate example to me is the nissan.com guy.

Oh! How could I forget! Legend! And they had to get NissanUSA.com

Yes indeed - I thought everyone knew that /s :)

You’ll be amazed how much googling I do when having conversations with friends - I wasn’t born in the West and things like movie references leave me confused af! But I hide it… thank goodness for urban dictionary

Looks up "af"

The other problem is people not capitalizing abbreviations as they should. You see even major news organizations doing it. The entire nation of Great Britain appears to think there's a space agency called "Nasa." Ignorant AF.

I think I read somewhere that there’s a rule for abbreviations that if they’re “pronounceable” you shouldn’t use all caps. For example, you write IBM because you articulate the letters, it’s not “Ibbem”. Conversely you don’t say the letters in Nasa, but you do in NSA and so forth.

It's dependent on the organisation's style guide, so not a 'hard and fast' rule, but you're correct

Other examples like this are whether numbers are spelt out (eg one vs 1), and at what point that changes (eg spelling out "ten" but writing 1,000)

But yeah, depends on the organisation.

Check out how the New Yorker deals with the word co-operation :P

As a Swede I have unfortunately lost all my respect for the New Yorker as an authority on language since I learned about their usage of the letter ö, which I guess is what you're referring to.[1]

Having a native language where this letter is very much present and carries phonetic meaning, it completely trips me up. It annoys me almost as much as when people use the equivalent letter Ø instead of the actual ∅ for "empty set". I'd probably even choose ⦰ but of course all of these choices require some awareness that a character is "taken" as well as some measure of consideration for people other than yourself and those just like you.

End of old man rant.

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...

Hahaha yes, that's what I was referring to and you're right to be infuriated by it. It's purely elitist horse-dust from The New Yorker to use ö rather than chucking a hyphen in there instead.

Abbreviations are not capitalized but acronyms are.

Was a little surprised by your comment - I don’t think you’re aware of usage in subcultures, it’s not about grammar.

Capitalization or lack thereof can indicates tone - e.g yelling etc.

For example - What’s up mf! (greetings) vs. What’s up MF! (fight/challenge)

urban dictionary can warp your belief in humanity.

But what's considered as an OG account? Age? Short handle? Something that isn't imaginative or a portmanteau of something?

I remember the ICQ days where the shorter your ICQ number, you are the OG of OG's..

OG refers to precedence due to age. It also tends to correlate with short names, but that's just because people like short names - and so short names are registered earlier and thus are older.

OG is the old gang of people, the original early founders/adopters/users.

OG means "original gangster": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/OG (see History and Etymology section)

> slang: someone or something that is an original or originator and especially one that is highly respected or regarded

Old Gang of people... the original gangster. This doesn't seem wrong. OG directly translates to Original Gangster, but is used to refer to the old crowd, the original people, the firsts, etc. In extreme example, it would not be considered incomprehensible (but perhaps strange) to say something like "native americans are the OG north american inhabitants"... really nothing to do with gangsters.

Technically true, but... if you say it means "old group" or "original gaggle" or "oldest goat," you should probably expect to be corrected, because it sounds like an implication that that's what OG actually stands for.

It is notable in this case that gang is the root of gangster.

Can be simply read as OriGinal

Well TIL. I thought it stood for Old Guard meaning "original or long-standing members of a group", but I'll take "original gangster" instead, sounds better :-)

OG does not mean “original gangster”, only confused senile journalists believe this. Just read it as “original”, or accept that nobody uses it as an abbreviation anymore.

Here's another podcast episode about it, and I remember it being really really good. They actually befriend a scammer who is pretty open about how it works:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/v4he6k

TL;DR: The only methods discussed in this episode are SIM swapping and password guessing. Neither of which are relevant for OP. Unless OP is lying, there must be some other method used.

Halfway through this pod. This is terrifying.

Reply All also did an episode about this a few years back.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/v4he6k

tl;dr There's underground marketplaces where shady people buy and sell OG usernames for money, which creates an incentive for shady people to steal them from the original owners.

Perhaps incentives don't line up... but I'm wondering if social media sites like IG should make renting out usernames a thing - obviously there's a market for it. If I'm taking social media hiatus, for example, I wouldn't mind getting paid while away.

Sooooo how does that work? I rent your username while you’re on holiday for a month and then spam your followers with crypto scams and viagra ads?

Or they decouple followers from the username so the username becomes a transient thing, which then gets ignored, and becomes worthless?

I prefaced it with perhaps incentives don’t necessarily line up… maybe there’s a clever way to go about it. I was thinking it will be pre-approved category of content… there’s already such model with sponsored content influencers post.

That is basically how domains work, but there are grace periods for recovery.

How is my username made in the last 4 years different from an OG username?

Because all the good obvious ones are already taken. Simple ones like "kevin" or "a". Unless your name is super unique, your username from the last 4 years has some sort of quirky thing, like a weird spelling with extra letters or numbers to get around that.

OG names are names that are (and always were) in high demand, and therefore were quickly taken. The fact that your name was still available means that it wasn’t in high demand. OG names are being pilfered because they are in high demand and therefore highly valuable.

It’s like trying to register a .com domain - OG ones (short 2-4 letters) are only available in the aftermarket, and only if you have millions. You end up with along-ish name that’s also taken - so end up with domainhq or .io or whatever is popular now.

I'll have to listen!

Came here to post the same episode. Strongly recommended; it's eye-opening, and it will give you a good idea of the incentives and the type of people you're dealing with (although you'll see the techniques are the ones you are already know: SIM swapping, social engineering, escalation of personal attacks, etc).

Good luck defending your handle!

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