the internet is a small place

I can feel the impact I’m having on it.

All it takes is for one person to invent a little acronym or saying, put things a certain way, create a little flash animation, for it to spread across the internet like wildfire.

One person can do so much on here.

Dunno if you are familiar with the away message on AIM which states “I am not available because I am playing a computer game that takes up the whole screen.”

I remember typing that, or something very very similar to it, many years ago when I used AOL.

Now it seems to be in AIM and others have used it… was it me? I don’t know for sure, but this is just one example.

Things like AFK, TTYL, and more recently, “pwned” — who was the first to type this? Could be anyone, really, and it’s probably just one or two people.

Astounding

9 Responses to “the internet is a small place”

  1. john says:

    according to the first entry at urbandictionary.com:

    pwned

    A corruption of the word “Owned.” This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled “owned.” When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so “has been owned.”

    Instead, it said, so-and-so “has been pwned.”

    It basically means “to own” or to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force.

    “Man, I rock at my job, but I still got a bad evaluation. I was pwned.”

    OR

    “That team totally pwned us.”

  2. Faraz says:

    DUDE, this is really weird. I remember doing the same thing a few years ago. I played a game than took up the entire screen so i made up an away message to kids wouldnt IM me, and now i see that this is one of the default ones with AIM, i never figured this out.

  3. Kcrazy says:

    yeah, i made that happen. About 5 years ago. i hacked into the aol mainframe and typed that as in away message just to see if it worked. and for pure luck it did. sorta funny really

  4. WOW says:

    OH MY GOSH… that is so weird…. one time i totally did that because i just got my first AIM sn and i wanted to just make up some fun ones and i WAS playing a game and hten all of the sudden every one had it and it became default i dont know how it even happened…. if it just like sort of magically “became” default because it sounded so proper or something…

  5. Oerogami says:

    Same thing. I typed exactly the same thing around 2001 or something… mainly because I was playing a online game and hadn’t figured out Alt Tab.

  6. Laxplayer says:

    dude, thats so weird, like i just googled “I am not available because I am playing a computer game that takes up the whole screen.” because i swear that i made that up like 6 years ago, cause i was playing a game on my comp and i was in like middle school or something.. and i foudn this website so now im posting this… thats so weird

  7. aamir says:

    sorry, but I MADE THAT up in about ’98. i typed that exact thing. even called it “playing game.” nice try, though.

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