It's unlike me to post about these kinds of things publicly because I am a more private person and hate being in Situations, but this is a weird case and I'm going to talk about it because the nature of the situation has resulted in me likely needing to rebrand, and because the situation is kind of messed up.

I love my username a lot and I've had it since 2019, and at that time no one else was using it. I made sure of that, and internet search results show I was the first person to use this name. It felt like me, too, I was connected to it. So I've been making my art and a lot of my music under it. But I am likely going to change my name soon and the reason is kind of... crazy.

Basically, someone started using the same username around two years after me, which I normally wouldn't care about, but then they aggressively started using it for their business branding and stalking me for also having the name before them. They registered a whole dot-com website for it to top out search results (which uses graphics made by AI) and claimed the name on basically any site I'm not on, tried to contact me on some sites I was on where I did have the name, and half ran me out of search engines, seemingly on purpose. What's more is that this person is apparently a musician, and so am I, so it's easy to mix us up even if their version of the name sometimes has a space between. I'm just really creeped out, I've had stalkers before and I'm actually quite a paranoid person, so this kind of thing rattles me. I noticed them attempting to interact with me on a different site years ago, and recently they tracked me all the way to my discord attempting to contact me (which I immediately declined because again, I was freaked out), after which I saw how aggressive they were about hijacking my name with their own branding when I decided to do a search. Due to this and the website thing, search engines turn them up first now, and due to their stalking seriously freaking me out and me just being too tired to deal with this, it's very likely I'll be rebranding myself soon.

I don't owe them anything so I would not be doing this to appease them, I'd be doing it because I don't want to be mixed up with a weirdo who uses AI, makes music with my name, and acts like this, and I just want to be left alone. It sucks, but I don't think there's anything I can do about being run out of my own name recognition by a persistent creep who's been at this for years because they feel entitled to my name. I'm just too tired, man.

I do have another name chosen out that I like a lot, at least. It's not a huge change from the one I use now, but is still distinct and rolls off the tongue the same way, and I verified it's not used already, so I'll announce when I make the change, if I do.

... Man. What a weird situation. This feels like the kind of drama you'd imagine happening to you in your head, but then go "that's ridiculous, good thing it's a completely unrealistic situation that won't happen". Let me tell you, having something like this actually happen feels incredibly strange.