Forbidden Donut

No.

How do you lose screen-names? They live on a server. Probably in California. So unless that server burnt to the ground in a wildfire, your list should be safe. (This topic makes me wonder how many servers/server farms AOL has, and where they are located)

Also, I read the name mungo somewhere else, looked it up thinking it was something noteworthy, and discovered that the name means:
A material of short fiber and inferior quality obtained by deviling woolen rags or the remnants of woolen goods, specifically those of felted, milled, or hard-spun woolen cloth, as distinguished from shoddy, or the deviled product of loose-textured woolen goods or worsted, - a distinction often disregarded.

Wow... At first I thought that Andrew just made the most bizarre insult that I've ever heard, but I looked it up... he's right. That is an actual definition. What has the world come to?

edit: e-cook and 1 internetz to anyone who gets my AIM name (offer doesn't apply to governor, dan, romerash, weed, true believer, CJ, or scabdates).

aw no fair /sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />

Maybe it was an insult?

I have your aim squirreled away somewhere. Maybe in my AIM list. Which brings me back to my original question:

How do you lose your buddy list?

people still use AIM?

Do you have a sufficient alternative?

The phone

The phone is definitely a useful tool and is often a much better communication solution than instant messaging, but that hardly means a phone serves as a replacement for instant messaging. We've got a variety of ways to communicate with each other now-a-days (email, instant messaging, social networking, phone, etc.), and they all have their own benefits as well as drawbacks. In general, it's safe to say that there is a time and place for each of them.

What would be your rationale for disregarding the use of instant messaging in favor of using a phone?

I'm amazed how none of you have actually managed to leave your aim screen names yet...

Epic fail.

Because nobody talks to one another anymore. Instead of talking face to face or over the phone (where you can at least hear voice inflections/tone/etc) people have resorted to talking through email, text, IM, etc.

I really didn't realize this until a few years ago when I saw some co-workers (and sometimes myself) struggle in the establinging/building business relationships, presenting ideas/results, getting their point across, or even just being able to hold conversation over lunch. Granted not everyone is completely inept when it comes to socializing, but I think years of sending IMs and text messages has had a negative effect on our society's ability to communicate.

Plus if you're needing to talk to someone, there's a greater chance of them having their phone around then having them be in front of their computer with time to talk.

This smells like rotten baloney to me. Maybe it's cause I'm still in college, but I haven't seen much in the way of people having trouble socializing. I would argue that phones and text messages have resulted in a closer tying together of the human population as a whole from a huge increase in communication, instead of the opposite. Communicating in a business environment has always been a difficult task to accomplish, especially in a more formal situation, such as presenting ideas/results. You can say one thing, and it's amazing how often people will here something completely different than what you were thinking in your head. That and some people are just scared/don't know how to do it.

My screen name is schism521

Jedd your screen name is in your member profile: JeddHampton

I'll be honest, when I created this topic I really didn't think you guys would be able to turn it into a debate thread, but congrats, you found a way somehow.....

Instant messaging gives you the ability to express tonality and inflection as well; it just requires the user to expressly declare it. This does, of course, require additional effort on behalf of the individual, but that doesn't justify dismissing one form of communication in favor of another -- especially since the method you favor (phone) suffers from similar drawbacks as well as additional problems that instant messaging may not also suffer from.

By your rationale, you should no longer use the phone because you won't be able to see a person's facial reactions, the direction they're speaking in, their surroundings, or their hand gestures. All of those things help to make talking in person one of the best methods of communication in a one to many situation. However, that hardly makes it the best form of communication in all circumstances.

Consider a many-to-many situation. I am holding a conversation with three different people and each one of those people is holding a conversation with multiple different people as well. This would be nearly impossible if we were trying to do this on a phone, and it would be extremely hectic and confusing if we were trying to do it in person. The best tool for this would definitely be instant messaging.

If I wanted to send out an invitation to a party, both the phone and in-person methods of communication would be laborious at best. Instant messaging may be a slightly better solution since you can simply copy and paste, but it would still require messaging a lot of different people and would, in most situations, require the user to be online. So, in this case, the best solutions are email or social networking. They are each less-immediate and impersonal, but they are the best tool for the task.

My point is, it is just as foolish to ignore or shun one form of communication in favor of another form that has very different benefits and drawbacks as it would be to overuse one form of communication (like instant messaging) when other methods exist that would better suit the scenario.

In short, there is a time and place for the phone as well as instant messaging and the use of each should not extend beyond that.

Tommy: I can't really speak for anyone else, but perhaps people aren't posting their screen names here because they don't want to post their screen names in a publicly accessible forum? Oh, and any conversation can turn into a debate. It only requires someone to say something that was blatantly false, general ignorant, or just plain stupid. Luckily for those of us that enjoy critical discussions, all of those things are said quite frequently.

Off topic (ha!) but studies have shown that providing employees with an Instant Messaging client at work improves productivity in a white collar workplace. The idea is that when people write an email, they tend to treat it like a letter. A lot of time is lost to people trying to sound professional. And the phone tends to interrupt whatever work a person is doing. You may be able to talk on the phone and work at the same time, but you'll be pretty bad at both. However, an IM can sit on your screen blinking while you do whatever, you can check it whenever you like, and after checking it you can triage it and decide what the next step is. And all that happens really rapidly.

I get probably 12 emails a day at work. 0 phone calls. And about 50 IM's. About half those IMs are people sending me articles and pictures and we can lol back and forth while staying on task, the other half are useful pieces of information, meeting plans, etc.

Just sayin'

/Not that you talked to me ever, but: ANunes06
//My screennames have a theme. Can you guess it?

Kind of on topic: Unblock me, asshole.

Let's take a look at a typical day in the life of Andrew:

Wake up at 7:30, shower.
Leave house at 8:00, get to work around 8:30
Leave work around 5 - 5:30
Avoid my actual house at all costs
Get home around 11:30 pm
Sleep

My computer isn't even hooked up to the internet...

There is no blocking. Asshole.

You just said you are on all day at work.

On the shitty LotusNotes IM client (called SameTime) My username on that is useless to you.

Ah. I gotcha.

Also I don't block people, I put them in a category labeled "Dead To Me" and never speak with them again.

I am so glad that my office doesn't use that. We use LotusNotes for e-mail, but we mostly just use MSN messenger for IM. It's a slight upgrade, at least I can use Pidgin for that.

-dan

p.s. Tommy, my screen name is hennisbaseball.

p.p.s. You still didn't explain how you lost your original screen name.

I use ventrillo with my friends, I don't even have aim installed.

No AOL products on my PC =P

I will just assume you've ignored the rest of the thread.

orderly chaos 16

hungermaw

Lotus Notes is one of the most annoying products ever... IBM should start all over. I don't know where to begin with my frustrations...



That was the gimmick. I didn't think anyone would even check.

noisy consonant.


no one fucking cares if you don't use aim anymore. either post an aim screen name or jump into a pit of snakes.

Don't you remember mine. Know what I mean wink wink gnosh gnosh ehh ehh?

Budweisercs

Will only be online once every 3 months. /tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" />

i wish we had IM at my work I rely on emails and yes alot of people do worry about remaining professional, all i can say is thank god for saved templates...

though email is handy for one thing, it allows you to prioritize the problems without making obligations...

oh and i dont use aim i use msn

of course you need to be on when i am afk, how the hell am i supposed to harass you /tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" />

Zestfule is my main screen name even though I have it linked to my old one most of you probably have so they're both signed in. Frat still randomly tries to minimize me even though the only game I play now is WoW and that I play in a window.

yjongu is where you can reach me

vizual impakt

cutchins17

whoah, crazy haircut CJ.