---
title: Handles Are Haunted Houses
date: 2026-06-26
status: active
tags: hacker, journal
summary: Rantz
---
## Handles Are Haunted Houses

Everyone had names back then.

Some were jokes.
Some were masks.
Some were warnings.
Some were just kids typing too fast in the dark.

A handle is not a name. It is a room you used to live in.

You can leave the room. You can grow up. You can get a job, pay taxes, marry, move, rebuild, repent, reform, become useful, become boring, become professional.

But somewhere, on some forgotten drive or archived page, the room still exists.

The wallpaper is ugly.
The code is bad.
The ego is worse.
The kid inside it thought he was immortal.

That is the embarrassing part of the old internet. It remembers versions of you that could never survive sunlight.

So yes, I had names.

Most of them are dead.

Some were fake.
Some were borrowed.
Some were misread.
Some were given to me by people I barely remember.
Some were probably better left in the ground.

I do not need to leak to prove anything.

I can code.

That was always the point.