Instant aggravation over messenging
Grant Myers
The Daily Free Press
BOSTON, Mass.
We need to have a serious discussion about Instant Messenger. The other day somebody named Cooliodog881 started talking to me while I was online. This was a problem because, first, as a general rule I don't talk to people who refer to themselves as "dog;" and second, because he was using phrases like "brb," "lol," "ttyl" and "jk." In my opinion, if one-syllable words are too complicated for you to type, then you need to stop IMing and concentrate on more important skills — like shoe tying and swallowing. And if you are one of the few people who IMs more than you talk to people, then you need to stop and examine your life, and question whether or not you have a problem (hint: if you IM your roommate across the room, then you need to buy a Rubik's cube and lock yourself in a bathroom stall).
People who use IM are separated into three primary groups:
1) People with too many friends
2) People with no friends
3) Big fat hairy guys over 50 who claim to be cute little girls named Suzy.
Actually, the people with too many friends don't have nearly as many friends as they think. As a matter of fact, they don't have any friends. There's a simple equation that demonstrates this principle: Number of people in your buddy list equals the number of friends you don't have. The thing is, they don't realize that when they IM somebody and that person writes back and says, "I'm sorry, I can't talk now, the cat is on fire," what that person is really trying to say is "Leave me alone, because I hate you." However, nobody ever catches on to those subtle hints (trust me, this one guy reported me to the ASPCA because my cat was so prone to spontaneous combustion when he IM'd me).
Of course, people with no friends are even worse, because they are even more desperate to talk to somebody. I'm sure this has happened to you: you're online watching a hilarious video of a wombat mauling a tourist, when all of a sudden you get an IM from somebody saying, "I read your profile and I also live in Boston." Of course, in reality this person lives nowhere near Boston, let alone North America (and in all honesty, you'd be lucky if the person isn't presently residing in an institution with the words "correctional facility" in the title). I got so sick of random people trying to talk to me that I changed my profile information to stuff I thought nobody would ever be interested in.
For example:
Name: maybe
Age: donkey
Location: shaft
Interests: drinking ketchup, looking at a wall, alphabet
Sadly, even more random people began IMing me, which is really scary because I never want to meet someone who is interested in drinking ketchup (And if I really wanted to, I'd just go hang out at Emerson).
However, if IM is a disease, then those little smiley faces made out of colons are horrible-monkey-spread-ear-bleeding epidemics. Nobody really talks to me online; they just send me a stream of faces that are supposed to represent their response.
Somebody had to come up with these things, which makes me think to myself, "I sure would like to meet that person; then shove his beloved colon key right up his cyber geek nose." But don't take my word for it — look at this conversation that I had with my idiot friend:
ME: How are you?
IDIOT FRIEND: : )
ME: How's school?
IDIOT: : (
ME: How's your love life?
IDIOT: ; )
ME: Wow, you are an idiot.
IDIOT: : P
ME: I can't believe society has given you the tools of mass communication and all you can do is hit the colon key.
IDIOT: : ()
ME: People like you shouldn't be allowed to breed.
I've been laboring intensively for months now trying to develop a little face that is giving the finger, but sadly my efforts to date have been in vain. My attempts at a little barfing face have also come up short.
Then again, there are more important things to worry about when IMing. Has this happened to you: It's vacation and you are IMing with a buddy from school, and you say something like, "wow, that drunken orgy last semester sure was great, wasn't it?" Then it turns out that he was on a computer at his church and the priest was there and all of a sudden he's going to hell, when in reality that jerk who started making the smiley faces ought to be going there. If that hasn't happened to you yet, then watch out. Also, watch out for people named "dog."
This article first appeared in the Daily Free Press on Feb. 5, 2001 and is reprinted courtesy of U-Wire.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, February 8, 2001
