A Merch Opportunity For Every Brand, Artist, and NFT Project

Merging fandom pseudonyms with merch to create unique 1-of-1 items and nurture community

Image by Dave Kan

I interact with more than 5,000 people on the internet each week. I don’t know their names, I don’t know where they live, what they do, or any of the personal details that one usually knows about a friend. Yes, these people are my friends.

We communicate in public and private across Discord, Telegram, and social media using pseudonyms.

These internet strangers turned friends, identifiable to me only by their usernames, have educated me, counseled me, and edited writings without us ever exchanging names.

To them, I’m @RickieTicklez, a person with original thoughts and a profile picture of a bucket-hat, multi-color puffer jacket Doodle.

RickieTicklez, that’s my pseudonym. Created as a slight departure from my legal name, it represents the fun, extroverted, personality that I am.

Why create a pseudonym?

From behind a pseudonym and a profile picture, you’re able to be whoever you want to be.

For me, it’s pretty fun to architect an alternate version of myself that creates a little bit of distance. And, if I’m being really truthful, my pseudonym represents the version of me that I aspire to be but have yet to develop the courage and confidence to fully become in the physical world.

For now, RickieTicklez exists only online.

In Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, he identifies what attracts people to pseudonymity, avatars, and the Metaverse:

“It lets you be whoever you want to be. That’s why everyone is addicted to it. You could create an entirely new persona for yourself, with complete control over how you looked and sounded to others. In it, the fat could become thin, the ugly could become beautiful, and the shy, extroverted. Or vice versa. You could change your name, age, sex, race, height, weight, voice, hair color, and bone structure. You could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.”