Max 15 Degrees Lit: A Few [sic] Words on an Ill-Fated ICQ Prank

Monday, February 19, 2001

What is the big deal?

On January 11, 2001, I posted to the daily section of this site an ICQ prank that I thought was funny. To this date, of all the many responses I have received regarding it, only one other person also thought it was funny. That person has been my friend for the past 15 years.

I would like to think that the reason he realized the humour in the post was because he knows me and knows where I wasn't coming from. However, I got a disfavorable response even from my sister, who should know me at least as well as does my friend, if not better. Every other response I got to the post was along the lines of "You are a sick, perverted individual who should be drummed out of our decent, moral society." As a gesture to another very close friend who indeed felt that way, I subsequently removed the post.

The following is the original post in its entirety (sans permlink link); see how it makes you feel.

Thursday, January 11, 2001 [by:SpaceBass] [permlink]

aping: sos,pls help a woman.oicq :102447xxx she will kill herself soon.
SpaceBass: tell her to hurry up
aping: sorry,she is not online now.
SpaceBass: but you got me all worked up. how about if you kill yourself so i feel complete
aping: sorry,i don't know her actually.
SpaceBass: dammit you better kill yourself or i will have to take matters into my own hands
aping: oh,she said to me :i have consumed pills to help but do not know if they will give me pease.
SpaceBass: she sounds hot
aping: and :there is no fun only sadness and lonliness aping: it comes from deep inside i fight it every day some try to help but you can not stop fate my mind will not let me rest
aping: do u want more about it?
SpaceBass: yea tell me more i'm getting really horny
aping: ok, she said:..if you were american you still would not understand be well my friend,dont ever let life destroy your heart,,mind and soul!
aping: it will not get better soon i will be at peace
SpaceBass: yea baby where can i find a girl like that
aping: the sleeping pills are entering my bloodstream i will get very sleepy then pass out my heart will stop while i am asleep
SpaceBass: damn damn DAMN
aping: i will want a small funeral when im gone
aping: there is no help for me i am a lost soul
SpaceBass: wtf does she care what kind of funeral she has if she's dead
aping: there is no one to help
aping: there is only one person but he has heard enough ofmy problems i will not tell him
SpaceBass: she must mean god
SpaceBass: he never listens to me either
aping: yeah, do u think that is truth?
SpaceBass: oh sure, god is a punk ass bitch
aping: she didnot tell me more .:((
SpaceBass: probably dead dead deadski
aping: sorry,
SpaceBass: it's sad because i didn't nail her
aping: she didnot tell me where she is.:(
aping: maybe it is a fun?
SpaceBass: not for me, i'm not into sex with dead people
aping: oh.
SpaceBass: i see dead people and they don't know they are naked
aping: :)

How do you feel?

On the face of it, this prank could certainly be viewed as twisted, if not downright disgusting. I'm sure that most people would agree that necrophilia is not an acceptable form of love or sexual gratification in our society (or indeed in any society of which I can think). I myself am of the same opinion. But necrophilia is not what I was selling here, and neither was it in the forefront of my mind when this ICQ conversation was taking place. I do not actively encourage others to commit suicide. I am not attracted to nor sexually aroused by the macabre. Yet, if you chose to assess my character based solely on a reading of this post, you would likely consider me abnormal at best.

It intrigues me that there are such well-known proverbs as "Don't judge a book by its cover," yet most people will do just that even though they would counsel others not to do so. Nothing kills a joke more quickly than explaining it, but indulge me anyhow as I proceed to kill this one.

Shall we dissect the post?

aping: sos,pls help a woman.oicq :102447xxx she will kill herself soon.

The first ingredient of any ICQ prank is some unknown idiot who messages you out of the blue with something that has absolutely nothing to do with you and holds zero interest for you. This allows you to have no compulsion about screwing with the messager freely.

SpaceBass: tell her to hurry up
aping: sorry,she is not online now.

Whoa, opposite day! My first impulse in playing with this guy was to give him a 180-degree response to his message. Therefore, I encouraged that which he had asked me to help stop.

SpaceBass: but you got me all worked up. how about if you kill yourself so i feel complete
aping: sorry,i don't know her actually.
SpaceBass: dammit you better kill yourself or i will have to take matters into my own hands
aping: oh,she said to me :i have consumed pills to help but do not know if they will give me pease.

He was obviously not getting it by this point. For some reason, he wasn't latching on to the fact that I was encouraging rather than discouraging. I tried to turn it around on him but he didn't cop to that either. I began to suspect that he might be either too dumb to get it or that English wasn't his native language. I needed to change tactics. What could I possibly say that would be more incongruous with depression and suicide than merely egging it on?

SpaceBass: she sounds hot

Of course! What could possibly be less congruous, not to mention more absurd, than someone who is attracted by this sort of thing?

aping: and :there is no fun only sadness and lonliness
aping: it comes from deep inside i fight it every day some try to help but you can not stop fate my mind will not let me rest
aping: do u want more about it?
SpaceBass: yea tell me more i'm getting really horny
aping: ok, she said:..if you were american you still would not understand be well my friend,dont ever let life destroy your heart,,mind and soul!
aping: it will not get better soon i will be at peace
SpaceBass: yea baby where can i find a girl like that
aping: the sleeping pills are entering my bloodstream i will get very sleepy then pass out my heart will stop while i am asleep
SpaceBass: damn damn DAMN

Here, I was starting to get really bored. This guy apparently had no clue at all. How could he not know that I was playing around with him? The last statement was more of a "damn damn DAMN, this isn't working!" nature.

aping: i will want a small funeral when im gone
aping: there is no help for me i am a lost soul
SpaceBass: wtf does she care what kind of funeral she has if she's dead

Quite bored now, I dropped the pretense in order to poke a hole in her story as related by this unknown comic. If I had for a moment believed that her threat to him had been real, this bit would have convinced me otherwise. Some people have a penchant for the melodramatic. Unfortunately, the Internet can make it really easy for them to annoy the rest of us.

aping: there is no one to help
aping: there is only one person but he has heard enough ofmy problems i will not tell him
SpaceBass: she must mean god
SpaceBass: he never listens to me either
aping: yeah, do u think that is truth?
SpaceBass: oh sure, god is a punk ass bitch

I couldn't help but quote South Park. By now, this prank had really lost most of its interest for me. I was casting about for anything to say that would help this guy to catch a clue. Disrespecting someone's god usually offends almost anybody. Since it didn't here, I pretty much lost hope of any sort of epiphany on his part.

aping: she didnot tell me more .:((
SpaceBass: probably dead dead deadski

I really like that phrase, "dead dead deadski." It makes me laugh all by itself.

aping: sorry,
SpaceBass: it's sad because i didn't nail her

A final attempt at resurrecting a part of the joke, which failed miserably of course. This is the part that most of the people who responded hated the most.

aping: she didnot tell me where she is.:(
aping: maybe it is a fun?

'Maybe it is a fun?' Oh damn, this guy definitely didn't speak English natively. He'd just asked me if she was playing a joke on him. I think she was in a way, though I doubt she was trying to be funny. I just don't think she was serious about killing herself.

SpaceBass: not for me, i'm not into sex with dead people
aping: oh.

Deliberate misunderstanding can be hilarious if done right. This is why double-entendres work so well. Please do not attempt wordplay with someone who is not fluent in your language, however. There may have been some element of disclaimer to this statement as well.

SpaceBass: i see dead people and they don't know they are naked
aping: :)

My last statement had reminded me of all of the parodies of The Sixth Sense that I'd been seeing at the time. I see dead people, I see dead people, blah blah blah blah blah. At least I finally got a smile out of that one. I don't think he ever truly realized I was playing with him, though.

In summary, I was attempting to screw with someone, to steer the conversation away from what they wanted to talk about in order to laugh at them. It occurred to me later that this particular attempt was even funnier since my victim never caught on to the joke. But judging from the response I got to the post, nobody else caught on either. So apparently it wasn't funny for most of the audience.

I would like to point out that my idea of an ICQ prank is that it is something that must be done in the moment. I require myself to ad lib everything and to have none of it planned out in advance. This is a lot harder than it sounds.

Now how do you feel?

I would bet that your reaction to this essay, if you even bothered to read past the quoted subject, is to think, "Wow, this freak is trying his damnedest to explain away his perversion as an intellectual experiment." The truth is, there was no experiment. I wish that I had been foresighted enough to have had some sort of theory to test, to have made a statement that I wished to prove, and to have had that post be the scientific test of my hypothesis. No such luck. I was merely playing around with someone who I felt had chosen the wrong person to message.

Why did I remove the post 'for lack of humour?'

As stated earlier, I removed this post from the dailies because it bothered a good friend of mine. Although I still personally felt that there was humour value in it, since I had had very little response to affirm that stand, I bowed to the pressure of the masses and took it down. Very soon, I regretted that act as a denial of my own opinion in favor of the majority, with whose opinion I did not agree. I sacrificed one of my principles in doing so. In this instance, I let society dictate what I should think, or at least what I should present to the world. I was more wrong in letting others tell me what to think and do than I would have been in being true to myself and leaving the post up.

Why am I writing this?

I am not in the habit of explaining myself or my humour. I expect people to judge me based on the whole of my actions and words, not on isolated incidents for this, as a rule, is how I assess others. However, there are times that it is made painfully clear to me that the world does not operate in such a clean and logical fashion. I offer up this essay as another sacrifice of my principles to those who would condemn me without truly knowing me, in the hope that they will perhaps question their own pre-processed ideas and begin to regard those around them who may be different in a more holistic, less hostile fashion. As they used to tell us in nerd school (the Talented and Gifted Program) when they gave us those annoying brain-teasers to solve: "Think outside the box."

I really don't expect people to judge me as a person based on a half-fictional encounter or some other manufactured farce on my website. If you have read much of this site, you probably have a good idea about its nature. Although this Lit section sports some (bordering on) serious reading, everything else is pretty much an attempt at the characterization of a madman. It's unfortunate that so many people are unable to distinguish fact from fiction, but that problem should be the subject of a future essay. Having that point shoved repeatedly in my face has caused me to add the disclaimer found at the bottom of this page. Another joke, yes, but one based in truth.

So where am I coming from?

I present the bizarre as entertainment, specifically humour. The bizarre is by its nature unfamiliar and/or unknown. The unknown engenders fear. Fear drives hatred. Fear and hatred are antonymous with humour.

What does this logical sequence mean to me now?

Be accessible and mainstream or be different and outcast.

Which of these options do I choose?

I choose to be myself. If this causes others shun me, so be it. Those who know me like me. I like myself. I have enough validation in my life without needing to be accepted by those who are willing to judge without all the facts and just as willing to condemn on a whim.

As a person, am I better or worse than you?

Neither. I am merely unique. Also, I see dead people and they don't know they are naked. No, not really. Jesus, pay attention.

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