Do you think there might be a reason for that?

[BookstoreEscapee]

Sometimes I hide myself on AIM, so I appear to be offline when I'm really not. Because I don't want to talk to anyone (mostly I talk to my parents...who I see practically every weekend...and talk to on IM almost every day during the week...because my mother seems to think that if I'm online she must acknowledge my presence as if I'm in the same room).

There's a reason I moved out of your house.

So I was having some problems with AIM/Trillian, and in trying to fix it I made the mistake of mentioning to my dad that I had it set as "invisible" (because he commented that I showed as offline...at the time, it was relevant).

So today I am still invisible, but a message from my mom popped up anyway.

Mom: my list always says you're offline
Me: then why are you talking to me?
Mom: daddy said you have a way to be online without it showing some privacy thing.. so I just took a chance and reached out

Does it not occur that there might be a reason you can't see me? Some privacy thing, perhaps?

Gah!

[Magpie]

I hate to have to point this out, but you blew it twice. Don't answer when you're appearing offline and someone messages you!

[BookstoreEscapee]

i know but i was having another problem with it anyway. hopefully now that's fixed. it appears to be, at least. or not. .....ok maybe now. <sigh> I hate computers sometimes

apparently if i'm invisible they don't get an auto response. if i was really offline they would get a message that so-and-so is offline and their message was not received.

guess i'll have to start using away messages instead.

(edit: and for the record, the part I posted was somewhere in the middle of our conversation.)

[Chazzie]

The nice thing about the Invisibility thing, however, is that most people who do message you when you're invisible don't actually realize that they're supposed to get an auto response. So if you don't answer, they move on.

[BookstoreEscapee]

The nice thing about the Invisibility thing, however, is that most people who do message you when you're invisible don't actually realize that they're supposed to get an auto response. So if you don't answer, they move on.

True. Not sure if my mom would notice or not, frankly. The only reason she could send me a message in the first place was because the chat window is pretty much open all the time on their computer (it usually hibernates at night, instead of getting shut down every night, so whatever was up stays up when you turn it back on).

Maybe I'll make my away message "so-and-so is offline..."

[blas]

I don't even do Yahoo or MSN anymore, because I was always "appear offline". Some people just never get off the computer and always want to chat for hours on end.

With my computer working so slow at times or taking so long to load, people messaging me the nanosecond I hopped online, it pretty much jammed up the computer for a good few minutes or more. Same thing on Facebook.

[Android Kaeli]

I should download AIM or MSN again, I haven't used either one in a few years. I also used the invisible option sometimes because there were a few people that while I didn't mind talking to them, I actually *had* to stay in front of the computer -- these were the type that didn't understand the concept of 'brb shortly'.

I also had two other SN's for AIM, partly because I 'grew out' of the original name I used and because I wanted to be on AIM without going invisible 98% of the time.