Technological Admiration

Last night, I was salmoned. And until last night, I had no idea what that meant, nor had I ever heard of it. Basically, there’s a dude, or bunch of dudes, with a computer program. So, this program surfs livejournal (remember when I said this wasn’t one?), and finds two people who have just updated their journals and happen to also have their AIM screennames listed. It then messages one of these people with something (in my case, “The Spice Must Flow.”) from a screenname that is “—–salmon” (mine was topologysalmon). When that person responds, everything that they type actually goes to the other person. So, the people start talking, both thinking that they are talking to someone who has messaged them first with a confusing comment, and whose screenname is “—–salmon.”

As I said, this happened to me last night. And the person I was talking to as well as I were both very confused. I was a little scared, to be honest, because it seemed very similar to how my stalker talked to me (I have a legitimate stalker, just so you know…). But eventually I searched the internet for “topologysalmon” and came across the livejournal community for the victims of salmoning.

But I wouldn’t really call myself a victim. Once we figured out what had happened, we actually had a pretty interesting conversation; introducing ourselves while searching the web in parallel for this phenomena. And that seems to be the general reaction to being salmoned. Most people enjoy it. Its kind of a fun way of meeting people. A little creepy that it can be done, but now that I know what it is, I’ll be ready for it (whenever anyone with salmon in their screenname messages me.)

So, in sum, the internet is an interesting place, where interesting things can happen. Unlike the world of my computer and printer (that’s to tie it to my previous real post.)

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