PORTLAND, Ore. — Following examination of his birth certificate, sources confirmed that KillEmAll_88, a teammate you were matched with while playing Dota 2, only has that number in his username because he was born in the year 1988. Thank god.
“It’s like me saying that about the other team,” explained the gamer, who had recently turned 36 years old, in defense of his username. “You know, ‘Ooh, we’re gonna win! Kill ‘em all!’ You won’t believe how many times I’ve had to explain this.”
KillEmAll_88 has used some variant of this username in online gaming since playing Quake III Arena when he was eleven years old, and has consistently had to explain his name for almost every day of the past 25 years. “I won’t say what my name was before,” explained the player, whose birthday is January 4. “But I stopped doing that for obvious reasons. You know, you shouldn’t give your full date of birth to strangers online. Might as well put my phone number in the username too.”
Over the years, close friends of KillEmAll_88 have suggested simply removing the number from his username. “I won’t lie, I’ve thought about it,” he admitted. “But in a way, wouldn’t that be letting them win? If us ‘88 babies gave up our more innocent use of the number, then it really would become a symbol of hate.”
“It actually got me into quite a bind back in my Warcraft days. I got a random invite to this guild called ‘HordePatrol’ right when I started playing,” he recalled. “I thought they were just big Alliance fans and being nice to newbies, but when I started reading their rules – oh boy.”
At press time, KillEmAll_88 was explaining that his alternate account, named ‘CaptainTripleK,’ was only named that because ‘CaptainTripleKill’ was already taken.
