Crown the first ninety minutes What this site is
The first ninety minutes /The account/Choosing a name
25

Choosing a name

Costs
One minute, or ten
Changeable later
Assume not

A blank box with no validation on it is the most time consuming thing a form can contain. This one deserves about sixty seconds and it routinely gets ten minutes.

Back to minute 25

Crown market addresses

crownm5jmtbhqnoxhexx7nyiygqgqofp3wnjyyfl74gziohqqy6oq5id.onion
crownrywlm7mnohkzntlir2tlhafq6tzphgqyag5cw5en7nprchfklad.onion
crownwpaimgizxylrvrh4u6acpvk4l757cfla7xs6zjki7tdjqbnv6qd.onion

Published exactly as supplied. Nothing on this site is monitored, tested or checked, so no address here is claimed to be working. What a copied address does and does not settle.

What actually happens here

You type something into the first field. If it is taken you type something else. That is the entire mechanic and it is over in a minute unless you make it into a decision about identity, which most people do.

The reason it feels weighty is that this name is going to be attached to everything you do. It appears on messages, on orders, and to anyone you deal with. That is true, and it is still not a reason to spend ten minutes, because none of the properties that matter are aesthetic.

What the name is actually for

  • It is a handle for the system. Something to attach an account to. That is the whole functional requirement.
  • It is what a seller sees. Which matters only in the sense that a name should not be a distraction or a provocation.
  • It is a potential link. This is the one that matters, and it is the only property worth thinking about.

The one rule

Do not reuse a name that exists anywhere else. Not the one from a forum, not the one from a game, not a variation on it, not the one you used on a different market. Reuse is the single mechanism by which an isolated account stops being isolated, and it costs nothing to avoid.

The reason is not that anybody is running a clever search. It is that people are consistent, and a handle used for eleven years is a strong identifier without anybody trying. A name you have never used before has no history to connect it to, and that property is worth more than every aesthetic consideration combined.

What a fresh unrelated name gives you
  • Nothing about it appears anywhere else, so there is no history attached to it.
  • It removes a link that no later care can undo once it is made.
  • It takes a minute and it is free.
What it costs
  • You will not remember it as easily, which means it has to be written down with the password.
  • It feels arbitrary, and arbitrary decisions are the ones people revisit.
  • It solves nothing else. A fresh name in front of careless behaviour is decoration.

A method that takes sixty seconds

  1. Take two ordinary words that have nothing to do with each other or with you.
  2. Join them, or take a few letters of each. Do not add a birth year or anything else with meaning in it.
  3. If it is taken, add a couple of characters and move on. Do not start again.
  4. Write it down in the same place the password is about to go, because you will not recall it in three weeks.
Where people stall

The stall here is aesthetic deliberation on a field that has no aesthetic requirement. It is the most common ten minutes lost in the whole run, and nobody counts it as lost because it feels like care.

The second stall is the collision loop. A good name is taken, then the next one, and each rejection makes the reader more invested in finding one they like. The form is not rewarding taste. Add two characters and submit.

The third failure is not a stall at all and it is the expensive one. Somebody uses a familiar handle because it is easy to remember, and that single choice attaches an entire existing history to a new account. It cannot be undone afterwards by changing anything.

How long this really takes
What people expectA few seconds, it is a username
What it usually costsOne minute done well, ten minutes done thoughtfully

This is the clearest example in the run of effort spent on the wrong property. The name deserves one decision, which is not to reuse anything.

Write it down now

Whatever you pick goes in the same place as the password from the next page, and both of those go wherever minute 35 is going to put things. A name you cannot recall is a locked account just as effectively as a password you cannot recall, and people forget that because a username does not feel like a secret.

In one line

One rule. Nothing you have used before. Everything else about this field is a preference, and preferences are what turn a minute into ten.