including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in “Heil H…”))
It’s been a thing for a long time. I know several people who ended up abandoning favored, long-held user accounts that they had ending in their 1988 birth year because they kept being mistaken as nazis… typically by nazis who thought they had found ‘brethren’ and started spewing some hateful shit.
Is it true?
Depending on which part you asked about:
The only part that’s not true is that it’s “well-known”. I’ve literally never heard of this before.
It’s been a thing for a long time. I know several people who ended up abandoning favored, long-held user accounts that they had ending in their 1988 birth year because they kept being mistaken as nazis… typically by nazis who thought they had found ‘brethren’ and started spewing some hateful shit.
I’m sure it’s been around for a long time. That doesn’t make it well-known.
./shrug It’s always seemed well known to me, but like I said I also know a LOT of people born in 1988 who ran into it.