Dear readers,

“Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.”

As some of you know, I have decided not to access my Yahoo Messenger account anymore (March 1, 2009). In fact, I have decided to use the delete feature. FOREVER! (https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user) Drastic? Yes. Does it worth it? Big time! But… there are a few details I miss. I’m listening to “Metallica – Unforgiven 2″ (embedded below) and reviewing the fun and unique moments and some of the most annoying ones.

As all young people from this country, I created a Yahoo account long time ago (in another era). It was the time of browsing the World Wide Web sporadically from “Internet Cafés”; skipping school in order to play multiplayer games and proving our “matureness” by scoring head shots; piracy was rampant in our young heads; we did not care about rules, about Internet, about responsibilities. None of us understood the power of online communication; none of us thought about online personas; about bills and real time free communication. I created the email musculosul@yahoo.com (translated in English it was something along the line of thebrawnyone@yahoo.com). Funny decision, because I have a skinny constitution. But what can I say…? I was young and liked a lot a Sprite advertisement campaign at that time.

Time passed (I played countless hours of games and Yahoo games; I still consider it one of the best communities for playing chess) and I ended up in faculty. New town, away from home; with my ID I became cool. In this period, my ego started showing up and defining itself. The big picture: a skinny guy with an opposite and uber funny ID. I think also my charisma played a big part in becoming one of the young students who was on top of the wave. Parties, discovering the secrets (both the joyful and the grey ones) of a big Bucharest, finding out about people, interests, passions, responsibilities; all the small things that help you succeed in life. Regarding my relation with Yahoo, two events happened: (a) I changed the ID at one point in time to be more serious – name + surname like; (b) I started added a lot of people to my Yahoo messenger.

I am not sure what happened with musculosul@yahoo.com. I have the impression that I did not delete it. I have the feeling that my password stopped working one day. It does not matter that much. It was time to become SERIOUS! The transition was smooth; having a lot of students from around the country in a tool to communicate in real time gives a great sense of “power”; a great sense of belonging; I had no time to get bored: no matter the time of the day or night, I had people to talk with, to give me information, to help me; or just chat. I lost at one point my first serious ID. A great blow! No biggie. Created another serious ID – the one that I deleted in March (the one that I used extensively for several years).

With this last serious ID, things were the same at first. But with time, the communication changed; added people – from friends to random people. A lot of people. It is interesting to have a hobby of adding persons to your Yahoo messenger (strong connections with one’s ego). But how much time and how many people you add before the communication is disrupted by noise (or replaced sometimes), before relaxation in front of the computer becomes a time consuming burden; before the tool for communication becomes an addiction. Years, I have spent several hours per day in order to read offline messages, to check out who is online, to check statuses of different people, to talk about nothing with people I did not know. BUT NOISE CHANGES ONE’S PERCEPTION…

I define “Internet noise” as any message addressed to me which is not of interest for me. Noise is directly proportional with the number of people that are connected to me (you) through a communication tool. You can filter noise from communication in two simple ways: manually or automatic. Let us forget a bit about automatic filtering: no matter how good a tool is, manual filtering works best every time. From my point of view, Yahoo failed miserably at filtering the noise, at helping me filter it manually. Their biggest two fails: mass messages and tutoring users about blocking.

Mass messages are slowly killing any type of constructive communication. Every time (I used) you use the mass message feature, the following not so good events happen: you minimize the importance of every person who receives that message (it is not addressed at them specifically, it is a NOT addressed to people; it is addressed to a list) and at least one of the persons who receive it will consider that message noise. It is almost impossible to create groups of people to have same interests, feelings, passions. Mass messages are the simplest solution to spam people. Spam them with jokes, with links, with information that does not interest them. Think about it next time you will use that feature. Think how many of the people who you spam will be grateful for that uninteresting piece of noise you are spreading. Just saying…

Yahoo Messenger has ways to tag and block messages and people who are not of interest for you. I found out about blocking ALL people who are not in your messenger, but too late… But what do you do with the people that you already added? I (you) have to remove that person from your list and then tag the message as spam. And the most painful question: what if a friend sends you a noise message? Then those not so fun discussions start: “Do not send me mass messages and babel fish noise, please!” + “Oh, now you are really (insert not friendly adjective here)!“…

In my final months of using the Yahoo Messenger, I gave up. Every time I entered it, I was “invisible”. Bazillions of chat windows kept popping up. What made me press the “delete” button? My ego, mostly. Almost every person I know (from my country) uses Yahoo Messenger. Let’s be special – let’s be one of the few who take extreme measures. And I admit: it felt and it is still feels good! Would you completely and irreversibly delete one of your most important online accounts?

Best regards,

Geo.