Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Celebrity Buddies

I get several IMs every week that start with the message "who is this?". This puzzled me for a while - what would lead people to ask such a question? Do these people really forget who they added to their buddy list? Do they go around calling people on the phone and asking them "who is this?" Where did they learn their manners? I was really wondering until I read an article the other day about celebrity buddy lists. Apparently there are lists of celebrity screennames being sent around on the internet, which people add into their buddy list, and then try to strike up a conversation with these celebrities. Amazingly, I am on some of those lists. I can only imagine what it must be like for a real celebrity to sign on - getting bombarded by dozens of "who is this?", "waz^", or "prove you're really such-and-such" must make using IM a real joy for these people. To those affected, I apologize...

Here's one of the lists (note: I am not on this list).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be nice to have an approval system for adding a buddy on AIM like other IM services employ.  That way you could keep stalkers from adding you as a buddy.  Yes, you could just block by default but then you have to worry about manually adding people you want to be able to add you.  It could also be used to see who has added you as a buddy so if you ever need to change screen names, you can know who to contact.

Anonymous said...

I think it stems from this scenario:

Guy adds you to his buddy list.
Girlfriend sharks his computer, and goes through buddy list.
Guy doesnt know, but Girl wants to see who he's conversing with, where intended target is finding another woman he converses with.

It happens to me all the time. LOL quite fun. ;)

Anonymous said...

I get that all the time...

Anonymous said...

I would like to suggest to limit SPIM, AIM server should rate limit per IP address, not session. In conjunction with the Warn system, eventually blacklist certain IP's out from accessing AIM.

A few legit users would be affected like ones behind proxies and certain dorms, but a whitelisted, shall we say, "greylisted" certain ranges of universities and stuff. Akin to the Postmaster process - but not as strict.

Anonymous said...

you are the shit gj you are like the deadaim 2k6