Back in the heyday I was an IM kind of guy. I even had a 5 digit ICQ number.
When I was freelancing I found more and more of my clients would IM me. One day though, stands out in my mind, and marked the end of me and IM. It was my "last chat".
I am a funny guy. Just ask me, and I'll tell you all about it. I found I had a real knack for making one of my clients go into fits of "LOL", "LMAO", "ROFLMAO", etc. And when I say fits, I mean fits! Every response from this guy would be one of the above.
It felt odd to me then, but I now realize this was having a deflationary impact on my already teeny ego. I never once was fooled into believing he was really "laughing his A-word off", and I wondered how many other people he was "LOLing" at all day. It made me feel dirty, yet I kept going back for more. Every day I'd swear I wasn't going to do it, but I just couldn't stop myself.
Then one day I was scarred for life. It went something like this:
[nagrom]: something something...
[client]: LOL!
[nagrom]: some other thing...
[client]: hehe
[nagrom]: blah blah blah
[client]: ROFLMAO!
[nagrom]: bleh bleh bleh
[client]: LOLCATS!
I kid you not, that's how it went down.
The LOLCats symbolize all I hold dear. This was such a bastardization of my core belief system that I broke into a sweat, immediately closed my chat window, ran to the bathroom, and never mentioned this to anyone until this day. It took me years to come to grips with it.
I already have a serious pet peeve with people not knowing the difference between an acronym and an initialism. This, however, went way beyond anything like the old song:
"You say HuhTitTeePee, I say H-T-T-P!"
"You say sequel, I say you're a dummy!"
"HuhTitTeePee, HTTP, Sequel, Dummy"
"Let's call the whole thing off!"
I would have been more forgiving if this guy had asked me for his website's "earl". I would have said, "You mean the U-R-L?" and swatted at my face as if I was suddenly attacked by a starving swarm of moquitoes. I decided against firing him as a client but I have never really IM'd since. That experience really opened my eyes to the dangers of freeform communication. I just don't have the tools to deal with what's lurking out there.
So don't ask me to IM, but if you see me out there in the clickety-clackety ether of morondom, please be gentle.
Aug 30, 2008 at 11:19 AM I saw the title of the article and thought you were going to comment about how instant messengers are distracting... Something like this: http://blog.crankingwidgets.com/2008/08/19/switchtasking/#more-338
It seems to be that people are slowly catching on to the idea that a constant barrage of immediate communication mediums (cell phone, twitter, im, etc.) makes it harder to get things done.
So this was a surprise. :)
Aug 30, 2008 at 11:41 AM I saw the title of the article and thought you were going to comment about how instant messengers are distracting... Something like this: http://blog.crankingwidgets.com/2008/08/19/switchtasking/#more-338
It seems to be that people are slowly catching on to the idea that a constant barrage of immediate communication mediums (cell phone, twitter, im, etc.) makes it harder to get things done.
So this was a surprise. :)
Aug 30, 2008 at 11:44 AM Oops! Didn't realize Mango Blog would resubmit my comment on a refresh... for that matter, expected if it did that the captcha would have expired and trapped and prevented the resubmission that way... really unexpected that it would have that flaw in particular.
Sep 2, 2008 at 11:29 AM LLOL (i invented that one... "Literally Laughing Out Loud"). That way people know you are actually laughing out loud, and not just saying LOL.
Sep 9, 2008 at 7:15 PM Soon LOL will become an all mighty anacronym and that will be the day I give up on computers. Here's one for archives: SFMU - Stall four misses you.
Don't confuse this with the more common STFU, unless you are dyslexic, in which case I would forgive you.
Sep 27, 2008 at 8:48 AM Ike - I think that bug has been fixed in Mango now, I'm going to refresh to find out. So if this is the last post from nagrom, we can all say, "TGIF" (Thank Goodness It's Fixed)
Sep 27, 2008 at 12:11 PM So it appears to be. :) Thanks for the update nagrom. :)