Echoing everyone else’s sentiment, queer is a fine catch all as long as you know your audience. Remember not only might it offend someone in the community who has had that word used against them, it might incite violence or retaliation from someone who is not supportive of the community and might hear you use that descriptor and feel it’s okay to pile on with more unkind language.

Personally, I like using it because I struggle with identifying which word best describes my sexuality, so I like being able to just say “I’m queer”. Admittedly, because of my environment, I sometimes over generalize and just say “I’m gay” when in fact bisexual or pansexual would be closer to accurate, because the people around me at least have an idea what “gay” means, but would not be open to learning more inclusive language.

Edit : I wanted to add a silly comparison. In the south, particularly among older folk, some people use the term “coke” to describe all carbonated beverages, where many would say “soda” or “pop”. An example I don’t hear as much anymore, but still enjoy, is :

Waiter : What can I get you to drink?

Customer : I’ll take a coke!

Waiter : What kind?

Customer : Ehhh, a Doctor Pepper, please.

OP is in SoCal, so perhaps water restrictions and/or just a deeply dry climate making it hard to keep plants from getting a lil thirsty.

I feel like I’m alone in being happy to switch to usernames. The 4-digit always seemed strange to me, and any time I’d ask someone for their name they’d always say “Oh, I’m name!”, and then inevitably someone would followup with “What’s your weird number thing?”, and they’d say “Oh yeah, let me look it up”.

Being able to use effectively the same username you use everywhere else is miles better IMO.

Maybe someone here can explain what was so appealing about the number system?