The Story of "Smallbar2012"
- A professional group consisting of only a few lawyers?
- A diminutive eating establishment that primarily serves adult beverages?
- A little piece of metal?
These are all possible—though stupid—explanations for the origin of the smallbar2012 name. Fortunately, none of those is actually the truth, though the number of boozy Instagram photos with my account tagged in them may indicate some confusion about the second one.
No, the true story features far more heart, far more brotherhood, and far more happenstance in the mind of a 14-year-old with an embarrassing lack of originality. But we’ll get to that part later.
We must begin where so many of the greatest tales begin: in the LAN-party and couch co-op days of the original Halo. Of course, my mom insisted I was too young to play it (I think the ESRB would have agreed, seeing as how I was only 7 at the time), and as a born-and-bred Nintendoer (a term I just invented and would love to see popularized throughout the internet), my sights were solely focused on the Gamecube anyway. Who needs hyper-realistic shooting games when I could play as a mushroom-massacring mustachioed maestro? I convinced myself. I was content to leave my older brothers to their Covenant-gunning.
Or so I thought.
But man, that game looks cool. That guy in the armor is pretty dope. Oh look, there’s like a little hover car thing! Wait, is that a GUN that shoots NEEDLES?! GIVE ME A CONTROLLER!
I’m fairly certain that’s what my thought process looked like. Whatever the details, the gist is that I needed to get in on that galaxy-saving, Master Chief-controlling awesomeness fest as ASAP as possible. So I snagged a spare controller, pressed A to join, and…
“Name your profile.”
Well that was a stumper. Outside of sticking a name on a Zelda save file (which usually ended up being “Link”), I had no experience with any sort of player account system. Should I use my real name? That didn’t seem right for some reason, but what else could I…
I looked at my brothers’ profiles. One, belonging to a brother ten years my senior, had a name scrawled in such obscure L337speak that my elementary school brain couldn’t hope to decipher it. But just below that, belonging to my closest brother, was a profile with name shockingly simple. Logical. With an almost poetic sensibility:
“BIGBAR”.
Written all in uppercase, to designate strength, solidity, and the fact that kids think it’s fun to write in all caps. I understood immediately. He was “BIG”; my brothers have always been giants to me. And he was a “BAR”; clearly that was just short for Barlow. For those of you really confused at this point, that’s my last name.
Suddenly it seemed the stars had aligned, and I was struck with a vision of infinite clarity. As though descending fully formed out of the heavens, a profile name came to me with the ease and grace of an angel:
“smallbar”.
Written all in lower case, of course. It was so like my brother’s, whom I urgently sought to emulate, but unique in its own special way. It was me, and I was it, and I knew that I had struck gold. And I couldn’t limit that gold to Halo.
So I became smallbar everywhere I could. Every account I created, every save file I wrote, every chat room I joined (I had an awkward internet phase)—they were all christened smallbar. Even a t-shirt I own, given to me by my brother when I served as one of his groomsmen, allowed me to display my digital title proudly IRL.
That would have lasted forever, were it not for the gosh-darn popularity of Gmail.
See, I came relatively late to the email bandwagon. My parents (rightly so, I believe in hindsight) believed that email was unnecessary for a middle-schooler, not to mention potentially dangerous. So I waited patiently (for the most part), knowing that whenever that hallowed address was created I could stamp it with the smallbar name and call it my own.
Freshman year of high school drew near. My parents decided it was time. My dad opened his laptop, navigated to mail.google.com, clicked create an account, typed those eight beautiful letters and…
“That username is not available. Here are some suggestions.”
I was crushed. The heartless Google machine insisted I butcher my precious online moniker by appending irrelevant strings of numbers and punctuation marks. I couldn’t stand the thought. I scoured my brain for some way I could keep the smallbar name pure while still lending it the differentiation required by the internet box. I grasped at every straw I could imagine. But I had nothing. I hung my head, tasted the bitter broth of defeat, and resorted to the least original number available to my 14-year-old brain: my graduation year.
“I guess make it smallbar2012.”
Such an insignificant moment. Such a long-lasting result.
For it was that very account, named in a moment of defeatism, that three years later would be activated as a YouTube account, allowing me to curate a subscription list of all my favorite creators. It was that account that, four years after its creation, would become home to what is—no doubt—one of the worst videos hosted on YouTube. And it is that account that I am now proud to call my own, into which I have poured countless hours and which I so desperately want to see flourish. It’s been a long journey to get here, and there’s a long journey ahead. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
And I wouldn’t drop the “2012” for the world. Funny how things change.