Adrillf - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/10/double-lives

This one, unlike some of the others, I've got a chunk full of stories for. Yay for this one! Now the bad part about this is that I was expecting it to be double lives that were not as serious as the show goes into, but we'll do the happier, funner, more exciting less crazy, double life. There is the secret assumption that I have in my head that one of these days my parents are going to run around and finally let it out of the bag some huge secret, but whatever, we'll just jump into the fun story of Adrillf.

I've given a few different stories about where Adrillf came from, and why it's the name that I've adopted. One of the partially true stories that it comes from is that it's a character from a story that I wrote that I really enjoyed. Partially true, Adrillf was a character that I played in a D&D campaign, and was actually my first real character. 

The group of Joe, Jack, Bane, Malbro and Adrillf was the first, and most memorable D&D group that I have ever played, and Adrillf was me. The story of Adrillf took time to tell, it took a group of players and hundreds of dice rolls, and Adrillf became less of a D&D psionic, and became a pure teenage escapism of me and what I wished for and wanted in my own life. That's where the name came from, but then came the double life when college happened. 

At college I had to get email accounts, AIM log ins, online character names, and a bunch of other e-names, and I was in need of something that I could remember and of course meant something. I didn't want something that was ridiculous (I'm looking at you bkinferno2504) but also that wasn't something lame (yup, I've got that now adam.walters702), and so I got something innocuous - Adrillf. Something close enough that you could assume that it was a name, but also just odd enough that it was personal, and I knew that no one would ever have it on any server or email service I signed up for because I came up with the character, and his name.

There, on the internet, I ran into something that people have ran into before - internet anonymity. This is the curse that comes in the youtube comments sections, in the forum trolls, and the teenage boys playing CoD telling you just how much fun they had with your mom last night. It's the concept that online, you're free from society, there's no legal system, there's no responses to your actions, and there's nothing that is stopping you. If you want to run around and say that everyone is being stupid, you have the right to do so, or if you want to run around and be the nicest person in the world, you could do that too. The internet, because it has no actual social interactions on it, i a place full of anonymity, and instead of becoming the jerk, the troll, the idiot, the angry gamer, or any of those other typical stories. I became Adrillf.

Adrillf came alive on the forums of glowsticking.com. I was a thing called a post whore. I posted all day, all night, on everything that I could find. I talked to everyone, joked with everyone, and commented on everything. I was the internet version of a social butterfly. Even at one point, in the casual, informal section of the forums called the sandbox, I was the father of a made up family called the Post Whore Family. The music, the dancing, the partying, the friendships, it was perfect for me. In reality, I was stuck at college trying to understand life, and I was quiet. Adrillf was bouncing off the walls with activity, having fun with people that he had never met, and it was me.

Time has gone by, and you'd expect me to grow out of this phase of having a secret life, but Adrillf is still alive and doing well. Playing a video game and need a character name? Automatically it's Adrillf. Screen name for anything that isn't serious? Adrillf. RO? Adrillf. HoN? Adrillf. Strife? Adrillf. PSN? Adrillf. I am still Adrillf, and it's who I am, it's to the point that in public that if I was walking down the street and someone called me by the name 'Adrillf' that I would respond to it. Adrillf is not just a name online, after having this name and this personality for such a long time, Adrillf is me . . . just not to my family.

It's something that I think will always sit inside of me. I was an elder for the church, but Adrillf was still there. A college student, a newly wed, a father, a mormon, and everything else that I am, but I'm also Adrillf, and I don't think that my biological family has a clue about it. My wife, she sort of gets it. She recognizes the name, she knows where it came from, and she knows that I've put it partially behind me and not pushing the personality of Adrillf out on the internet. However, my parents, I'm 99% sure they couldn't tell you a thing about it. They'd recognize it as my email address, but not much more than that, and honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with having this segment of me, this section of my personality that is my double life. I like being able to wear a suit and tie and have a room full of people think that I've got my life together, and have them never think that I'm also Adrillf.