Ask HN: Nicks how often are they used these days?

Still common in gaming circles. I've met some of my gaming friends many times and they're still their nick to me.

They are still the norm on IRC-based chat applications and various forums. If you move away from social media networks, you will see nick usage a whole lot more

What's a "nick"?

Still common in infosec, gaming, and even just Twitter/Instagram accounts if the owner prefers to show a nick rather than their real name..

I have a couple friends (in their 20s) who have nicks that they use pretty much exclusively for online communication, but it’s increasingly uncommon. I’ve got a unique enough real name that I can use my first name on many services no problem, and if not my first+last is almost globally unique. People with more common real names often find more use for pseudonyms. I see it much more in the infosec community than anywhere else.

I miss everything about how 'pseudo anonymous' used to be the norm on the internet

Thanks Facebook for that. They somehow decided that your real life persona should be === to your digital one.

What does legally changing your name to your nick count for?

Joking aside, still see nicks commonly. Discord is almost exclusively screennames, IRC's as it ever was. Twitter is a mix of real/screenname, often with the same people having an RL name presence which is less used/more carefully curated.

I was just chatting with some girl about this..Back in my AOL days you would get hit with the 'YOU=' or 'U=' as soon as you entered a chat. Mostly because we had thousands of aol logins and was always on a different account.

My wife plays video games with a group of players and though they all know each other’s real names by now, they still call each other by their game names. They call me “Mr. YYYY” where YYYY is my wife’s nick name.