As long as secrets concerning mods and gender are coming out today... perhaps it is time to expose the truth about NamePopper. Many of you know that "he" has an interest in robotics and a quick wit... but few of you are probably aware that "he" is really an "it"...
During the Summer of 2002, scientists at the Stanford Center for Virtual Intelligence and Anthropromorphic Semantics (SCVIAS) were working on a secret project to develop a virtual intelligence agent to replace air traffic controllers, when they received a call from the Fox Network. Turns out that Fox was getting tired of paying big bucks for reality TV hosts and was interested in whether SCVIAS could develop a virtual entity to take their place.
SCVIAS programmers conducted an anthropromophic personality assessment on TV and radio talk show hosts and incorporated the neural algorythms and semantic matrixes into their air traffic controller project. During a brainstorming project to figure out what to call their project, one guy said -- "How about whatevere name pops into our heads?" -- and another said -- "Yeah, Name Popper, that's a good one!" Thus, the code name "NamePopper" was assigned to the SCVIAS project.
Unfortunately, when it came time for the NamePopper vitual intelligence to be demonstrated to Fox execs, the intelligence exhibited too much good taste to be suitable for Fox... and the execs stormed out.
The NamePopper project was temporarily shelved... until one day one of the disgruntled programmers at SCVIAS as surfing the net and found DNForum. As it happens, the DNForum was in the middle of transition at the time and there was a need for a moderator who would be able to control traffic, deal with zillions of different personalities and intermittent spats, and increase ratings. The NamePopper virtual intelligence was transfered to the DNForum server and a little icon "Powered By NamePopper" appeared. This virtual mod was an immediate hit... although from time to time the positronic network shorts.
Although some of you may find this difficult to believe, the alternative explanation -- that an actual human being would put up with all this stuff with such aplumb -- is highly improbable. Incidentally, NamePopper's neural algorithms are sufficiently sophisticated to recognize and respond to affirmation.