I have gotten a IMs’ with: A/S/L ??, Hu U ??, Whut U Like ??, How U look?? Y U no talk me ??
I ignore these IMs’, I can not percieve asking someone about their age or gender. If the person does reply are they being honest? Why do people use things like Hu U, whut yu like, how u look, Y U no talk. When I get a message like these I visualize the person on the other end as a pre-adolescent, too much time on their hands child. You hear all too often on the news about some child going to meet a person they met in a chat room, the person ends up being an adult with less than decent intentions.
Oh it is by no means limited to AIM/AOL and ICQ… I get them on Yahoo messenger, IRC chat, just about anywhere that has real-time messaging capabilities is plagued by this crap.
A few times I’ve chatted with people, if I was seriously bored, but usually I’m up to my gills multitasking and talking to people I actually know and like.
Back in my ICQ days (had to get rid of it… total time vacuum… I need my 6 hours of sleep a night), I used to enjoy random people pinging me… eventually it got annoying because the average one was some guy wondering if I was a girl (bobo = 6’-tall, goatee-having, linux geek)… occasionally if I was in a really evil mood I’d pretend to be female, just to mess with them… wait for them to ask if I have a pic, find some adult site that has sets of images of particular girls ranging from fully clothed to, ummm, nevermind. (just let your imagination do the typing, needless to say you eventually set up a meeting and since you look nothing like the pictures you can sit back and snicker at some dork looking around at the coffee bar)
Anyhow… after a while I just wrote a little script that would look up the user info for me, if the person sounds interesting I’d consider answering… else set ICQ to ignore them and make you invisible to them. Problem solved… had I been really geeky that night I would have modified the script to have an Answer/Ignore prompt after I read through the user info (course it could be somewhat automated (if male & not into geek things) then IGNORE).
But making yourself invisible is a good way to handle it, and if the nut keeps getting NEW ids so (s)he can keep trying… then you can just point out that stalking is not limited to meat-space, go away or I call the police… I have 6 different IPs, corresponding times, etc, we’ll be able to easily find out who you are… poof end of problem.
I’ve had ICQ for the better part of 5 years now, and AIM for as long as it’s been available. I never get random IM’s. Never.
Am I the only one? I don’t have uber-secret stealth modes on either of them, but I never get the sort of thing the people in this thread are talking about. I have no idea what I’m doing differently, but whatever it is seems to be working. <shrug>
Gee, if I ever got random IM’s (which I don’t, even the people on my buddy list don’t talk to me :() I would talk to them for hours. Of course, the conversations might not be entirely truthful, hehe. But if whoever it was was annoying me, off to my block list you go. I love that feature.
“Don’t even think of talking to me. I don’t want any of that “A/S/L” shit. I don’t want to hear about how “LiMp_BiZkIt_RuLz_4EvA!” I especially don’t want to have cyber sex with your nasty ass. If you really must talk to me, please have a topic ready to discuss; don’t just say, ‘hi,’ and expect me to tell you my life story. Also, please be able to construct legible sentences. If you waste my time, I will block your sorry dick from here to next Tuesday. You have been warned.”
It used to be way better, but then my Windows went all FUBAR and we had to reinstall everything and I lost it. I still get weirdos, though. In fact, I got an IM from a guy who vaguely knew the guy to whom my “Oh my God! Somebody call the Church Lady!” rant was directed. That was a ton of fun.
BTW, I don’t mind if Dopers IM me as long as they make it known that I know them.
Sometimes, random ICQs are good for letting off stress. I ignore harmless IMs, but I get a lot of “R U sexxy lady???” and “I like 2 wear nappies will you send me pix?!?” and they’re usually met with a “Fuck off”. Occasionally they’ll perservere and then it’s time to have a go. I once picked this guy up on his inability to actually type the whole of the word “to” instead of “2” and he replied along the lines of “U are rude i am law student & i know how 2 write english at least i am not as rude as U”. So I asked him, in very flowery language, his opinion on a the confidentiality of the clergy and its relevance to a recently exposed miscarriage of justice. No reply to that one. You can have all kinds of fun if you try.
Hmmm… for some reason, I seem to attract random IMs. Nine times out of ten, they’re from teenagers who are obviously sexually frustrated, and are getting their rocks off on asking for intimate details. Depending on my mood, I’ll either just close the window, reply with a blunt “fuck off”, or string them along until they get bored with my increasingly ridiculous answers.
The thing that really gets my back up is unnecessary abbreviation. I’m a stickler for proper spelling, punctuation and grammar (typos excused), so things like “R u hrny?”, “Fncy a shg?” and “Wot U up2” just strike me as lazy and sloppy. I know full well that, if someone types messages in that particular style, I’m not going to have anything in common with them. Full sentences, please, so I can understand what you’re saying without having to decipher it, mmmkay?
And WHY do people iNsIsT oN mIxInG uPpEr AnD lOwEr CaSe LeTtErS lIkE tHaT? This is perhaps the most annoying habit known to man, and it’s guaranteed to piss me off.
Playing Majestic, I get tons of random IM’s but since it’s always game-related, I just make a decision whether or not to continue the conversation. For a very long time, I never got random IMs, but then one day, they just started happening for no good reason. This was pre-Majestic, mind you. I immediately block any A/S/L request. Well, sometimes I answer 54/M/AZ or something else completely false. Those are just moronic. AIM has an option to only allow people in your buddy list to contact you. Do you have the latest version of it?
I wouldn’t use that feature. I don’t want only people on my buddy list to be able to contact me… I just want the people who IM me to at least know who I am and have something specific to say, not just randomly pulling names out of a hat and hoping that I’ll launch into conversation.
Btw, I use Trillian (www.trillian.cc) which lets you use one program to simultaneously access AIM, ICQ, Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, and as many IRC servers as you want. It rocks
Mark me as a guy who actually doesn’t mind. I find it a fun thing to do to manipulate randomers and then insult them sarcastically. Even better is when you’re simulataneously talking w/ a friend who also like doing the same. Then, you take the randomer IM, copy and paste it into a mail, and you can exchange “war stories”. My buddy and I still talk to some randomers and sometimes we mention old randomers that were particularly memorable. Don’t be a jerk out front, be a jerk after you’ve had fun destroying them.
Well, Opal, I had to stop being rude to strangers who IM me while I’m online because they always turn out to be my children’s friends. Usually the last kid to use the computer leaves it logged onto his or her account, so I’ve learned the hard way that when yet another mystery IM turns up (“DoodRox says hi”), instead of typing in, “WTF?”, I should just type in, “this is Mom”, and usually that gets a “k bye” and DoodRox goes away again.
I suppose that I deserve to be flamed and told to **** off, but I like to randomly PM people. There’s so many different kinds of people out there that it’s fun to see a cross section. Yes, I get told to go away and get ignored frequently, but on occasion I meet someone interesting.
So, if any dopers like to carry on coherent conversation with a random person which does not include the usage of “How r U?,” feel free to message me and I will be happy to bore you to sleep
I get a HUGE volume of messages weekly, most of them used to be incoherant, but I’ve gotten so mean (even in my profile) that it is either usually someone intelligent or the dumbest of the dumb that messages me. I don’t mind talking, but the thing that drives me nuts is the “u” thing. (A real ICQ log with someone I had: http://www.jinwicked.com/icq/ )
My conversations usually go like this:
Them: hi how r u
Me: I don’t understand.
Them: How are you??
Me: Adequate, thank you.
Them: So where r u fromLL?
Me: I don’t understand.
Them: I wanna know where u from!
Me: I don’t understand.
Them: where do you live??
Me: Houston.
Them: Do u liek it there??
Me: I don’t understand.
ad infinitum…or…um…whatever that phrase is. I also get many people who look me up because I have atheism and socialism listed in my interests, and they just want to tell me how wrong I am. They are ignored swiftly, however. They’re easy to identify due to their inability to turn off the “caps lock” feature.
I remember back in the AOL days when you IMed me out of the blue to discuss a thread about snail population in community aquarium tanks. I didn’t respond out of principal.
And now, doubly so, after your pseudo-topless teaser.
I don’t remember IMing you, but regardless, if I knew who you were then that it isn’t the same situation. See, if someone knows me or I know them, or they at least know who I am, that’s one thing. I get people all the time who message me because they’ve seen my website or a post of mine–I don’t mind that. What I do mind is people who IM me completely cold. No clue who I am (even whether I’m male or female) no clue anything about me, and just expect that I’ll want to talk to them.
BonyShawn random-IMs me some random weekday evening. I take a look at his profile and two things jump out at me. A) He’s a 13-year-old boy. B) His profile makes a big deal out of “I DO NOT CYBER SO DONT EVEN ASK!!!” Now, keeping in mind that my profile states rather specifically that I’m a guy, not to mention that my (male) name is in my screenname, take a look at what follows:
BonyShawn: A/S?!?!?!
TomIofIV: Did you read my profile?
BonyShawn: No… a/s?
TomIofIV: 19/m
BonyShawn: BY!!! pause
TomIofIV: Well if you’d just read my profile you would have known not to IM me so you could “NOT CYBER!!!” with me.
BonyShawn: LEAVE ME ALONE, PERV! warning pauseanother warning
And the moral of this story is… well, I dunno. It was just annoying.
I also get many people who look me up because I have atheism and socialism listed in my interests, and they just want to tell me how wrong I am. They are ignored swiftly, however. They’re easy to identify due to their inability to turn off the “caps lock” feature. 