For example, http://flwyd.livejournal.com/253835.html

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http://community.livejournal.com/themissinghat

It's linked to updating livejournal.

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I've been getting about one of these every day. It's quite irritating, eh?

That community is fascinating. It's like people who are fans of getting mud-splashed by passing buses. And their talk is like "Today I got splashed really good on my way from work! But when I tried to talk to the bus, it just kept going ;("

Edited at 2008-05-14 12:37 am (UTC)

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Or maybe "But when I tried to talk to the bus, the people inside yelled mean things at me and it kept going"?

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Unfortunately, AIM doesn't give me a way to block any user with 'salmon' in the name, or I'd have done so long ago. So, no, it's not just you.

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Take your AIM name out of your livejournal profile.

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I was once contacted by zombifiedsalmon, of course I thought it was someone I knew, so I replied, asking her which of my zombie friends she was.
Turns out I didn't know that 15 yo chick, but I managed to spook her quite a bit with zombie pictures.

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Wow, that's a fascinating insight you've offered us all there. Thanks for that.

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New plague. I've been getting them regularly for at least three weeks now, all *salmon.

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My current AIM SN hasn't been anywhere spiderable so I don't get these, but momentarily I thought you were going to bitch about the random marketing bots AIM adds to your buddy list every few months. Just the other day I met my new buddy USA Today. That pisses me off.

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This reminds me of a phone prank where someone would call two different Chinese restaurants (with employees for whom English is a second language) and order Chinese food. Then the prankster would ask each to confirm the order and put both calls on conference, where they can argue in English about what the order really is.

That is to say, it's a dick move that wastes everyone's time.

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I just leave my client set to block people who aren't in my buddy list. Is that oddly anti-social?

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Not necessarily, but I would find it inconvenient.

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1:37:16 enrichedsalmon: Jim, I'm not going to be able to get the T-15 in in time. I'm sorry man, but we're fucked. I think they're going to find out.

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The first AIM bot I remember was SmarterChild and I thought it was funny... but I stopped using AIM when all these bots started IMing me :\ I can't imagine getting a dozen of them in a week~

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I tried some of those query bots a few times and they were never as "smart" as I hoped. They seemed merely to do boneheaded keyword parsing and puke out extremely limited answers, or else were menu driven; basically CLIs implemented in chat. Damn, who cares? I can get better info quicker just using my browser if I'm going to be online anyway. :P

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Yup, it's a plague--the salmon bot is designed to start a conversation between two strangers by firing the opening volley, and opening a chat between two accounts in the process.

I think the most apt one I've gotten was 'reifiedsalmon'.

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You know, you can tell that I already knew that by the clever way I made use of the "HREF" attribute of the "A" tag up there...

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Actually, I can tell that you knew about The Great Hatsby bota, but not a whit about salmon bots.

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Don't they do exactly the same thing?

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Mmm... in overall intent, yes, but TGH always uses the same opening volley while the Salmons use a wide variety. (Also, the TGH creators were more creative with usernames, rather than simply [adjective]salmon.)

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WTF are you using AIM for?

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You still use SFnet, I assume.

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FidoNet.

/lawn, off.

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skype prank was both funnier and a service to society.

Sadly, it is defunct and nobody's bothered to resurrect the idea.

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Because you wrote this, I was able to address one of these properly and had a wonderful conversation with a stranger and now they know what has been happening to them, as well.

This stranger taught me (by example) a great strategy for dealing with random weirdos who pop up: reply in Russian.

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