Do any of you use a messenger service?
Pretext: Hi, my name is Scott. You may be offended by what you read, but I beg of you to not take this post too personally. I am writing this in concern with no pun or offense intended. I have made a few (frankly disturbing) observations over the last few days and I know that this document most likely will not get taken seriously or may be removed shortly after posting, but I feel it is my obligation to you (the reader) to write it. Forgive my writing skills, I have a difficult time collecting my scattered thoughts and placing them on a single page.
Do you really have such an empty and meaningless life? Tonight I spent a little while reading over some of random threads on this AIM forum website and others like it. I was shocked, amazed, and simply abhorred at what I would read over and over again. There are people out there, so many people, who clench an unhealthy and inhuman view on this “messenger†that so many of us are familiar with. I watched one post as a little boy asked how he could get a special screen name so he could be ‘elite’. I saw this same type of post over and over, from countless different people. I could not help but gasp at the realization that there are so many people out there that will do anything and everything for a simple string of characters that is used as their identification on an internet messaging program. Over and over I kept asking myself, “Do people really base the value of their lives on the type of screen name they have?†The truth of the answer is more disturbing than the question: yes. Yes, there are people out there that will stoop to incredible lows to get a screen name. Yes, there are people who will practically anything to get a combination of letters for their identification handle. Yes, there are people who earnestly believe that their messenger identification handle somehow amounts to their self worth and value as a person.
However, this was only the first half of my unsettling discoveries. Some may argue that my point comes from insanity, but I think it derives from an epiphany. I only shortly wondered (baffled in amazement) at the reasons behind why people wanted some special screen name when the answer slowly faded into my realization. These people do not want the screen name. The screen name by itself is useless and meaningless, is it not? These people want the recognition, respect, and admiration that may come along with it. I see no other reason for anybody to spend so much of their life circling around such a narrow obsession. The truth doesn’t change the facts though; people respect those with special screen names. With this being the underlying motivation behind people wanting to obtain one, the whole concept of owning special instant messenger screen names is little more than memorabilia worth it’s immeasurable weight in respect from others. But wait, if you stopped someone on the street and told them that you spent two solid weeks of your life working to get a screen name, would they admire you? Would they congratulate you? Would they respect you? Would they even care enough to listen to you? The only people who care, the only people who respect you, the only people who could possibly admire you are those people who are entrapped in the same circle of narrowness as you are. The groups of instant messenger users who are obsessed with the service can be thought of as a walled community. They are more or less completely detached from the rest of the world in their ideology and they are self feeding, growing on each other. Propagation of your kind is a byproduct of the way you’re causing yourself to grow inadvertently by the endless cycle of “eliteness†being respected and admired as the ultimate highpoint of a person’s world, when in actuality it’s the ultimate epitome of an empty life.
You may be wondering where I fit in all of this. You can see by my information that I have a three letter screen name (KLP). I even wrote screen name crackers before. I wrote AimPoo because I wanted a project to work on to learn C#.net for work, and I wrote Venomcrack because I really wanted to lean how to write programs in Python language. I decided (in both cases) that I wanted to learn a new language, so the project I picked to get my started was a screen name hacker. I have never run anybody else’s racking software before, and I have never hacked a screen name with software I did not write, and the only times I run the software I write is when I’m debugging. I’m approaching this AIM screen name possession topic from the opposite direction than most of you are; I think the differences in our views are obvious.
So what’s the problem? As I look out upon these people and read their posts, my heart aches in pain and my mind longs for them to be hit with the realization that what they are doing is tiptoeing on the edge of an endless downward spiral. I see some people who are incredibly smart, far exceeding me in intelligence and knowledge, who waste their lives twiddling in the immaturity of obsessing over screen names, who watch their years flow by mingling in silly arguments, and who and rot their own minds obsessing over meaningless dust. I really think that these people should find a better use for their talent, their mind, and their life! As far as social status, I think that eliteness is worthless in life. The concept of eliteness is not one of being great; it’s one of being seen. It is nothing more than a social ladder that uses computers and keyboard instead of footballs and pompoms. Some may see it as eliteness, but I see it as emptiness; the horrifying waste of a human mind and the unrecoverable loss of years of a person’s life.
Please, tell me honestly. If you’re reading this post, you’re most likely a regular visitor of an instant messenger forum who spends the hours of their life frivolously wasting the minutes they breathe trying to amount to greatness through the path of emptiness. Tell me, do you really have such an empty and meaningless life?
What are your thoughts about people who are obsessed with a messenger service?
-John