A new rap game has started right here, in your Wi-Fi menu
September 21, 2016 12:19 PM   Subscribe

The Museum of Wi-Fi: While most of us keep the standard NETGEAR-15, linksys_8A or UPC27458 as it is, some true gangsta 2.0s have decided to stand out on their Wi-Fi lists by dropping their best punchlines.... The Museum of Wi-Fi exists to preserve these vestiges of our neighbourhood battlefields.
posted by Cash4Lead (64 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Came to see "Yell PENIS for password", was not disappointed.
posted by Etrigan at 12:24 PM on September 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


Finding odd connection points are one of the great things about War Driving/Biking/Walking. Nothing makes me want to cook up a hacking distro like "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN" as an AP name. WiGLE will read APs out as it encounters them which makes warwalking with your phone like having an extra sense mapping these bubbles of signal radiation.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:30 PM on September 21, 2016 [8 favorites]


The Palestinian woman who lived in the basement of our old row house called her WiFi "The Palestinian Underground" which I liked.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:31 PM on September 21, 2016 [33 favorites]



This reminds me that I need to update my routers name, still using netgearXXX after I moved into my new place in November.

They're great a in-joke to anyone who visits.

BTW, I would never name a router 'hack me' or 'honeypot' - that is just an explicit challenge to gain unauthorized access.

Looking at my history of accessed places, none of them are remotely noteworthy but I still chuckle at Gary Motel - what my roommates and I dubbed ours in college, living in a roach-infested house and whose denizens we called 'gary'.
posted by fizzix at 12:32 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Our neighborhood has one named "Pretty Fly for a WiFi" - makes me chuckle every time I see it.
posted by Mooski at 12:33 PM on September 21, 2016 [10 favorites]


MOM USE THIS ONE made me laugh
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:38 PM on September 21, 2016 [13 favorites]


I love this.

As we are big Lincoln fans, ours is named "Abraham Linksys."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:38 PM on September 21, 2016 [12 favorites]


I keep hoping the neighbors will name theirs "Router E. Lee" but so far no dice.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:39 PM on September 21, 2016 [21 favorites]


Near me right now: "Flaming Penguin Humidifiers," "PrettyFlyForAWiFi-5G," "Om Shanti Om," and "The Quinnternets"

And yes, that data should be enough to locate my present position if you're sufficiently bored.
posted by zachlipton at 12:42 PM on September 21, 2016


Our neighborhood has one named "Pretty Fly for a WiFi" - makes me chuckle every time I see it.

*cough*
posted by Johnny Assay at 12:44 PM on September 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


I've gotten some mileage out of my network name, Hide Yo Kids Hide Yo Wifi
posted by Mayor West at 12:50 PM on September 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


A local strip-mall has a urologist's office. I can only presume that they are the location of the AP called ItHurtsWhenIP.
posted by scruss at 12:53 PM on September 21, 2016 [9 favorites]


*cough*

Well, did you hear the one about the fire at the circus?
posted by Mooski at 12:53 PM on September 21, 2016


My friend with teenagers has one called "Smith Family WiFi" that's for the kids to use, anda separate network for the parents so they can turn off the kids' WiFi at night but the parents can stay up watching Netflix, which they dubbed "Hey Kids Get Off My LAN"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:55 PM on September 21, 2016 [14 favorites]


When I was in my 20s my friends and I went to great pains to make sure our answering machine messages were *incredibly* witty (like, you just would not believe), and I'm sure that if we were of apartment-sharing age now our WiFi network names would receive a similar level of attention.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:57 PM on September 21, 2016 [14 favorites]


I've always hoped to someday meet the "Rhode Island Sluts" that have been living near me for years. So far no luck.

If you live in DC I either want to meet these people or am these people.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:59 PM on September 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


Before I had to use Time Warner's setup, mine was open and its name was something like Please be nice. If you camp out in my driveway, you'll be approached by nice neighbors worrying that you got locked out or something, and secretly wondering if you might be up to No Good. It's my preferred form of security, since the dog welcomes all humans in to the house with face-licking.
posted by theora55 at 1:03 PM on September 21, 2016


borat voice my wifi
posted by The Ted at 1:06 PM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Nothing makes me want to cook up a hacking distro like "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN" as an AP name.

Well, now you're making me regret one of my life choices.
posted by middleclasstool at 1:07 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I must also admit my shame over not having thought up "Wu-Tang LAN".
posted by middleclasstool at 1:08 PM on September 21, 2016 [9 favorites]


> Well, did you hear the one about the fire at the circus?

TOO SOON1

1: The Hartford circus fire, which occurred on July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, was one of the worst fire disasters in the history of the United States. The fire occurred during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was attended by 6,000 to 8,000 people. 167 people died and more than 700 were injured.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:09 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


I used to use the cactus emoji as my wifi SSID, until I bought a wireless printer that was very unhappy with that. It was a cool way to mess with my friends, though.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:15 PM on September 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


Over at the Reddit ex-Mormon sub, someone reported being at a church conference in St. George, Utah. While there, they discovered an access point labeled The Nauvoo Expositor. This someone was quietly shocked yet amused, and surprised no one else seemed to notice.

Nothing makes me want to cook up a hacking distro like "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN" as an AP name.

I think you should give your potential victims a little warning and enticement by naming the AP "FREE CANDY"
posted by honestcoyote at 1:32 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Someone in our neighbourhood has named their Wi-Fi "Quifer Sutherland." (That's not how you spell the first word!)

Ours is Bad Kitty Ranch; we even have a personalized mail stamp that says the same. For guest, it's Bad Kitty Ranch Guest. I should Shepherd if we could change that to Bad Kitty Hostage or something.
posted by Kitteh at 1:33 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've always hoped to someday meet the "Rhode Island Sluts" that have been living near me for years

You know that's a Dumb and Dumber callback, ya?
posted by hwyengr at 1:38 PM on September 21, 2016


While I was out of town this weekend, I saw Bill Wi the Science Fi. That was pretty good.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:52 PM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Mine is currently: Started from the Baud Now Wi-Fi
posted by Fizz at 1:57 PM on September 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


My neighborhood has Silence of the LANs and FreeBrady.
posted by maryr at 2:05 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


My wife answered a call at the campus police department a few weeks ago from a parent concerned by the potential presence of pedophiles and/or the FBI based on the names of WiFi hotspots in the dorms. To her credit, my wife maintained her composure throughout the entire call.
posted by ericales at 2:09 PM on September 21, 2016 [7 favorites]


Mine is "Domain of Ace"...which isn't especially amusing or clever, but at least I'm consistent.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:14 PM on September 21, 2016


But you could have been Ace_of_Hubs!
posted by maryr at 2:14 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


My husband has named our past and present WiFi networks "wewillallbeunemployedsoon" and "VanDownByTheRiver". (He's a bit pessimistic.) If I were to rename one of them, I would probably follow the lead of one of my fellow Hamilfans and go with "Best of WiFi and Best of Women".
posted by Meghamora at 2:33 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I pulled some of the funnier ones from my logs, my faves:

"GetOFMyWifi-guest"
"()==[::::::::::::>"
"A Series of Tubes"
"AhhZombies"
"BruhWeGotWifi"
"Cool Story Bro"
"Fuck Your Lawn "
"I'm the admin now sal"
"She wants the D-Link 5"
"ThatWasProbablyJesusChrist"
"United Kates of America "
"in a lan down by the River"
"nothin_but_a_g_st_thang"
"Batman's Secret WiFi"
"Batman's Super Secret WiFi"

And everybody's perennial hack target:
"dont reset my shit fag"

I'm moderately surprised that in 10K records Nobody seems to have gone for the emoticons.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:20 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


What's with the Mac OS 7 aesthetic? Why not use actual screen caps? Lord knows there are plenty of weirdly named Wi-Fi networks out there, but this just looks fake.
posted by monospace at 3:54 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I lived in Boston, there was a WiFi network in the neighbourhood called "Buttman Is A Penis" that would always come up on my list. Amusing! But after a couple years living there, we more or less stopped caring about it.

Until one day, my roommate and I were chatting with a neighbour couple down the street in their doorway, and over my neighbour's shoulder I spotted a name plaque on their apartment door:

ROBERT BUTMAN

My eyes grew wide. I tapped my roommate on the shoulder, interrupting her mid-sentence, and nodded at the plaque. She stared, she looked back at me, and in perfect unison, we screamed "BUTTMAN IS A PENIS!"

The man of the neighbour couple gave a sheepish grin. His girlfriend looked down and covered her face in shame.
posted by saturday_morning at 3:55 PM on September 21, 2016 [14 favorites]


I'm honestly surprised more people don't untick their Broadcast SSID box on the router config. One less opportunity to show off that sparkling wit but since I've started doing that a few years ago (along with a pass key of course) I've had zero instances of unauthorized access to my knowledge whereas I'd get the odd interloper here and there before even with a protected network.
posted by dreamlanding at 4:13 PM on September 21, 2016


That causes your clients to broadcast probes for it wherever you go, which isn't great for your privacy. And it only keeps the honest off your network.
posted by wotsac at 4:24 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


"I can hear you having sex" makes me chuckle whenever I come across it at my friends apartment.
posted by P.o.B. at 4:42 PM on September 21, 2016


"Because Fi."

RIP Harris Wittels.
posted by kittensofthenight at 5:07 PM on September 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Semper wifi
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:14 PM on September 21, 2016


Currently mine is "Rearranging Some Deck Chairs." Not the wittiest but kind of like the "current mood" setting on social networks.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:09 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


These are as entertaining as the names of ships in the Culture series.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 6:15 PM on September 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wait, who doesn't give their network a cool/funny name? Sad.
posted by bongo_x at 6:15 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Literally all of my neighbors use the Comcast/AT&T crappy defaults. And have their goddamned routers set to automatically pick a channel, making 2.4GHz really suck here. Every time there's a power outage my wifi speed goes from barely passable to pure shit as they somehow manage to choose either the channel my AP is on or a closely overlapping one.

Lots of stuff on 2, 5, 7, and 10. The selection algorithms are apparently blindingly stupid.
posted by wierdo at 6:38 PM on September 21, 2016


Mine is Entertainment 720, a Parks & Rec homage. I may need to start thinking of an updated pop culture reference for it, though. (Hmm, perhaps this will become an AskMe in the nearish future...)

(After my experience with the name "Hellmouth," my first thought of "The Upside Down" just feels like it'd be inviting trouble.)
posted by Superplin at 6:57 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


2.4ghz sucks everywhere unless you are in the boonies.

Of course if you do extra-large bonded channels 5ghz can get crazy dense as well.
posted by vuron at 7:11 PM on September 21, 2016


How about an updated Parks & Rec reference like "The Cloud for your Cloud" or something?

As a fellow fan, I want to support your decisions to pay homage.
posted by VTX at 7:21 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I still lived with two other guys--holy crap a decade ago?!--we named our wifi network "Troika", which isn't that great but I was very proud of the passphrase, which was "there's three of us and we rule."
posted by thecaddy at 8:08 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Since I lack any observable markers of adulthood like a marriage, children, 401k, property, etc., and am only now being dragged into the real world kicking and screaming after spending the past 7 years in grad school, mine is Never Never LAN.
posted by quiet coyote at 8:27 PM on September 21, 2016 [8 favorites]


We live in a particularly crunchy couple of bocks in a lefty neighborhood in a blue city island in a deeply red state.

One of our neighbors has a Wifi SSID that says "Beat it, hippie".
posted by intermod at 9:00 PM on September 21, 2016


Currently around me:

RadioFreeEuropa
Bill Wi the Science Fi
name
turboman
PINKROSEBUD

... and a bunch of boring HOME-34F42-etc. and NETGEAR-34etc.

... one of which is mine.

I'm going for safety in the crowd.
posted by Ender's Friend at 9:14 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


My sister has had wifi named "That's Not How You Spell Dinosaur" for years, because her neighbors apparently misspelled dinosaur when naming their wifi. I find this troublingly petty. Mine has usually been named some permutation of OMG INTERNETS because frankly, what else do you call the big pipe that makes the internet show up at your house?

Speaking of wifi and pipes, those of you who contributed to my dissertation about people getting lost online may be interested in my research this past year, in which I asked people to draw how email gets from them to the recipient. Not only did most people not understand servers even when prompted; not only were they more likely to mention satellites or cell phone towers; but a couple of people actually indicated they don't think wires are used at all anymore in transmitting internet traffic "because nowadays we use wifi."
posted by gusandrews at 9:46 PM on September 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


An old favorite Gawker post: Park Slope Kids Salon: Stop Calling Your Wifi "LuLu's Anal Bleaching"

A person who controls a wifi near the "combination hair salon and toy store on the increasingly stylish Fifth Avenue strip of Park Slope" called LuLu's has given his or her network a positively vulgar name. It is a name that threatens to sully the posh and sophisticated reputation of a shop that charges $26 to give your child a new lease on life via his or her tresses ($10 for just a bangs job). It is a name that is not good for kids.
posted by old_growler at 9:56 PM on September 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm boring, mine is called "Arda". As in the name of the world of Middle-Earth. And all my devices are named after characters and places therein.

My neighborhood is also boring. I only see SurveillanceVan#63 amid lots of defaults.
posted by seyirci at 5:11 AM on September 22, 2016


"Mom, use this one" is freaking perfect.

Mine is boring old "Studio Base", but it's still the most eclectic of anything in my range.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:14 AM on September 22, 2016


Mine is "Frobozz Magic Internet" and I also enjoy my neighbors "Invisible Swordsman".
posted by exceptinsects at 5:17 AM on September 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mine is from when I lived in a house with four other dudes, but other than that nothing special except it referencing the dark pit from hell (now with the 5g bands, the fast pit to hell).

"La Puerta Oscura del Infierno"
"La Puerta Rapida al Infierno"

I also have

"rosielovestointernetshop"

but other than that it is the standard one.
posted by lizarrd at 5:37 AM on September 22, 2016


I used to use my apartment number out of a desire to be neighborly (people would know where to knock if they needed to borrow a cup of internet!) but nobody ever asked.

Now I still use my old apartment number even though it no longer makes any sense, because it's less trouble than changing settings on all the devices at once.
posted by asperity at 8:01 AM on September 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


My wifi is named "Arbitrary" because the upstairs neighbor who picked it out thought we'd rename it. Unfortunately, we don't actually know how to change it. I keep meaning to learn, primarily so I can rename the network "Specific".

(We're also still using the default password he came up with, which is basically "This is the default password." We figure that since it's a full sentence, it's actually pretty secure.)
posted by maryr at 8:27 AM on September 22, 2016


Not anymore...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:31 AM on September 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Look, I can't remember the correct combinations of synonyms, capitalization, and punctuation half the time. You're welcome to figure it out yourself.
posted by maryr at 10:07 AM on September 22, 2016


At work I have a bunch of random ones, but always including "eduroam", which is a gigantic worldwide socialistic enterprise that our university has gone all-in on.

At home, Laphroaig (the previous one was Lagavulin).

Next door, "HaHaYouDontKnowThePassword", to which I do know the password. Heh.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:45 AM on September 22, 2016


Used to have Wi-Fi-Fi Delilah

At one point, a neighbour had no security at all on their access point, and nmap showed none on their Windows laptop. I may have dumped some jpgs of evil clowns among the holiday snaps in their Pictures directory and set my SSID to CLOWN HQ SEZ SET PASSWORD, because why pass up a teaching opportunity?

Or I may not. Who can say?
posted by Devonian at 7:25 PM on September 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Uncle Touchy's Puzzle Basement - apparently it's a Patton Oswalt reference.
posted by bendy at 9:57 PM on September 22, 2016


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