Man Legally Changes Name to a Wi-Fi Password
Family and friends struggle to pronounce "St@rW@rsFan1977!".
PORTLAND, OR – In what legal experts are calling the most bizarre identity transformation since the dawn of the internet age, 42-year-old former accountant Gary Mitchell has successfully petitioned the state of Oregon to legally change his name to “St@rW@rsFan1977!” – complete with special characters and exclamation point.
The shocking development has sent ripples through both the legal community and Mitchell’s personal life, with family members reporting they can no longer introduce him at social gatherings without causing confusion and technological chaos.
“I’ve been trying to explain to my grandmother how to say his name for three weeks now,” said Mitchell’s sister, Jennifer Kowalski, visibly frustrated during our interview at a local coffee shop. “She keeps asking me to spell it, and when I do, she thinks I’m having some kind of breakdown. Last Sunday at church, she just introduced him as ‘my son’s friend with the computer problem.'”
The transformation reportedly began after Mitchell became obsessed with what he calls “digital identity authenticity” following a series of what sources describe as “increasingly erratic” social media posts about government surveillance and the “corporate colonization of human consciousness.”
Court documents obtained by this reporter reveal that Mitchell argued before Judge Patricia Hernandez that traditional names are “analog relics designed to suppress our true technological essence.” His 47-page petition included detailed diagrams connecting Wi-Fi passwords to “ancient naming rituals” and claimed that adopting router-style nomenclature would “unlock dormant frequencies in human consciousness.”
The legal precedent has stunned constitutional scholars nationwide. Dr. Margaret Finch, professor of jurisprudence at Stanford Law School, warned of potentially catastrophic consequences: “What Mr. St@rW@rsFan1977! has accomplished here could fundamentally destabilize the entire framework of human identification. If this catches on, we could see mass adoption of algorithmic naming conventions. Imagine a world where every birth certificate looks like a software error message.”
Perhaps more disturbing are the reports emerging from Mitchell’s workplace at Henderson & Associates, where employees claim his email signature is causing systemwide crashes. IT director Kevin Walsh told this reporter that the company’s servers “physically recoil” when processing internal communications from the newly-renamed employee.
“The computers don’t know how to file his timesheets,” Walsh explained, his hands shaking as he gestured toward banks of malfunctioning monitors. “Our payroll system keeps asking us to connect to his network. Yesterday, three different printers started broadcasting his performance review to neighboring buildings. It’s like the machines are trying to communicate with him directly.”
The situation has grown even more bizarre as Mitchell begins demanding that all official correspondence address him by his complete legal name, including proper pronunciation of each special character. DMV employees reportedly required crisis counseling after a four-hour ordeal attempting to process his driver’s license renewal.
Restaurant hostesses across Portland have begun maintaining secret lists of establishments that refuse to take reservations under “unconventional digital nomenclature,” while Mitchell’s dating profile on various apps has allegedly caused multiple platform crashes.
His mother, Dorothy Mitchell, reached a breaking point last Tuesday when she attempted to update her will. “The lawyer started crying,” she reported. “He said he’s never seen anything that made less sense in 30 years of practice. The paralegal quit on the spot.”
Perhaps most troubling are unconfirmed reports that other individuals have begun following Mitchell’s example. Sources within the Oregon state legal system suggest that at least seventeen copycat petitions have been filed in recent weeks, including requests to legally adopt names like “Password123!” and “Admin_Override_2024.”
As this unprecedented situation continues to unfold, one question haunts legal observers nationwide: What happens to society when human identity becomes indistinguishable from network security protocols?
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
