I recently experienced a wave of nostalgia when I was contacted by an Aim spambot in AOL instant messanger. Back in 1999-2001, highschool for me, a few of my friends and I were adament AIM users. Every once in a while, one of us would give an aimbot the name of someone to initiate contact with, and wait to see what the person would have to say about it, after mentioning it in conversation or somehow bringing it up. Apparently today my screen name got picked up by an aim spambot, and the following conversation is the result. I have done a lot in software development and computing in general, and I look forward to the day when such interactions are more realistic. Please also note that “lol.. wat” is something I almost never ever say in chat.. I just thought it would be funny to say to someone I didnt know, in reply to something equally outrageous 🙂

[11:59] ProbedCoho: Ye may think I be a pirate, yarr, but the truth be that I be a proper privateer!  Yarrr!
[12:00] sanimalp: lol.. wat?
[12:00] sanimalp: oh.
[12:01] ProbedCoho: who is this?
[12:01] sanimalp: this is jon.. who is this?
[12:01] ProbedCoho: and yes
[12:02] ProbedCoho: sean
[12:02] sanimalp: hmm.. sean who?
[12:02] sanimalp: its cool i dont need to know.. i just dont know any sean’s…
[12:03] ProbedCoho: ryon
[12:03] sanimalp: hmm, well my name is jon steege. i don’t know that i know you.. but i happen to be a ninja… so that makes us mortal enemies..
[12:03] ProbedCoho: ok…
[12:04] sanimalp: how did you get this aim name?
[12:04] ProbedCoho: …what?
[12:04] sanimalp: lol..
[12:05] sanimalp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_versus_Ninjas
[12:05] ProbedCoho: i didn’t…you messaged me
[12:05] sanimalp: i did?
[12:05] sanimalp: hmm.
[12:06] sanimalp: you started with :

[11:59] ProbedCoho: Ye may think I be a pirate, yarr, but the truth be that I be a proper privateer!  Yarrr!
[12:06] ProbedCoho: yeup
[12:06] sanimalp: ok
[12:07] sanimalp: that was the initiation of the contact from my side.. i didnt send a message to you.. so if you did get a message from me.. then something fishy is going on..
[12:07] ProbedCoho: no i didn’t
[12:07] sanimalp: uh.. didnt what?
[12:08] ProbedCoho: yeah it would appear so
[12:08] sanimalp: what is 37 times 186 sean?
[12:08] ProbedCoho: huh?
[12:09] sanimalp: i was wondering if you could do the math to prove you are not an aim bot..
[12:09] sanimalp: heh
[12:09] sanimalp: cause that is always a fun test..
[12:09] sanimalp: back in the old days, there used to be aim bots.. they seem to have died out, but some were rather convincing.. they happened to really suck at math though.. its the whole turing test deal..
[12:10] ProbedCoho: how about no?
[12:10] ProbedCoho: oh ok
[12:10] sanimalp: alright. sure.
[12:10] ProbedCoho: oh ok
[12:10] ProbedCoho: gotcha
[12:12] sanimalp: nice.. you are an aim bot..
[12:13] sanimalp: sorry you failed the turing test. see you later..
[12:13] ProbedCoho: or no
[12:13] ProbedCoho: does not compute //:
[12:13] sanimalp: lol..
[12:15] ProbedCoho: what now?
[12:16] sanimalp: for(int i =0;i>-1;i++){}

Unfortunatly, I will never get the satisfaction of knowing if the bot entered an infinite loop, but it did stop replying after that! My guess is that it did not.. but I can hope.