One made-up word, earned slowly
Nobody sets out to be called Dlonem. It took a random name generator, a decade as a potato, and one rebrand to get here. Watch the moon fill in.
Carlman622
Every online life starts with a first username you can't explain. Mine was Carlman622, on Roblox. The account is still out there, frozen in a striped hoodie and a Roblox cap it's been wearing since January 2010. Nobody, me included, has ever worked out what the name was supposed to mean.
The dream project back then was an authentic Hunger Games map. This was before Discord, and before Skype was a given, so my cousin Randy and I would fire up Roblox and call each other on our families' landlines, staying on for hours while we played. Unlimited phone plans had not reached either of our houses yet.
Randy's mom eventually opened a phone bill with hours upon hours of our calls itemized on it, easily a couple hundred dollars' worth. The Hunger Games map was never finished. The bill is the real legacy.
Noaha the Warlock
Middle school, World of Warcraft. A warlock named Noaha carried me through the Lich King era, including a proud stretch of joining Icecrown Citadel raids I had no business being in. I'd get kicked for having no idea what I was doing, queue back up, and try again. I never made it past the second boss. Damn, I would try.
A death knight needs a name
Sixth grade, going on seventh. It was time to roll a death knight, and I couldn't think of a name, so I hit WoW's random name generator over and over, never quite liking any of it. Then I took one result, removed a couple letters, swapped another, and landed on a word that didn't exist anywhere: Dlonem. I named the character and moved on. It would be sixteen years before the word had a real job.
The Mr.Potato years
On Steam I became Mr.Potato, and to basically everyone who knew me, just Potato. (One guy insisted on "Tater." There's always one.) Old friends from that era still call me Potato today, so I would say it stuck.
Right up to the rebrand, my profile picture wasn't even a potato. For a while it was a turtle in a baseball cap. I didn't have my own thing going yet, and getting one is what everything after this is about.
The Game Center
Back then the friend group lived on Skype, because it was simpler than Steam voice: always on, and you could call anybody. Then I stumbled onto Discord before most people had heard of it, and moved us over. It started as a group server with a plain little game controller for an icon. There was no "TGC" and no grand plan, just "wouldn't it be cool to meet more people to game with?"
It blew up into something bigger anyway: holiday merch giveaways, game nights every couple months, seasonal icons for every holiday, and me playing the designated adult in a server full of teenagers. ("You probably shouldn't be saying that" was the moderation policy.) It even got its own website. Ten years later the server still exists, and so do all forty-something versions of that controller icon.
The word comes back
A potato is hard to build a brand on. Looking for a name that was mine, I remembered the death knight. Dlonem was unique, unclaimed everywhere, and already had history. The YouTube channel launched under it in 2019, and the letter D started showing up in profile pictures, first in a ghostly Danny Phantom style, later sharpened into the crescent-and-scythe mark it is now.
Dlonem LLC
Today the word covers a YouTube channel, four Discord communities, two Crusader Kings III mods with thousands of subscribers, and a small studio shipping privacy-friendly mobile apps, officially incorporated as Dlonem LLC on July 1, 2026. Sixteen years from name generator to legal entity. Full moon. Still building.
The mark, wherever it lands
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