#oneaday, Day 9: Mild Irritations: aolsystemmsg

The trouble with mild irritations is they have a habit of repeating themselves. And the more they repeat themselves, the greater the effect they have on you.

Such is the case with instant communication’s best friend, “aolsystemmsg”.

If you’re unfamiliar with this robotic twat (ably played with aplomb by Money-Bot above), let me educate you.

If you use instant messaging services like AIM, Skype, MSN, Google Talk or Yahoo! Messenger these days, you’re undoubtedly delighted by the fact it’s possible to stay in touch with your friends/colleagues/people you fancy wherever you are thanks to the wonders of smartphones. And sure enough, it’s great to be able to sit in Starbucks, or indeed the middle of a field, and chat with someone who might be thousands of miles away.

If you’ve popped out and left your computer on, however, there’s a chance you may have left your instant messaging client of choice switched on back home. No big deal, you might think. And, if you’re using Google Talk, it is indeed no big deal whatsoever. If you’re using MSN or Yahoo! Messenger, then it’s a mildly bigger deal; they insist that you can only be logged in on one device at a time, and so they log your other device back home out automatically. Fair enough—it’s a simple matter to log back in later.

AOL Instant Messenger, though, does not like this at all and gets very jealous of your other devices. Dare to log into another device while your first one is still logged in and you’ll be bombarded with IMs from the mysterious “aolsystemmsg” helpfully informing you that you’re logged on in two different locations, and that if you’d like to log the others out then would you be kind enough to type the number “1” now, please.

Well, all right, “bombarded” is perhaps a little strong. You get one IM. But you get this one IM every single time you change devices. If you’re like me and you hop back and forth between desktop computer, netbook and iPhone quite a bit, this can become extremely frustrating very, very quickly. “aolsystemmsg” takes on its own personality in your mind, a robot sitting there copy-pasting the same message to you over and over, cackling maniacally at your growing annoyance because he’s not actually causing you any harm and therefore isn’t breaking Asimov’s First Law of Robotics.

He’s still a complete cock, though. And there is no way to turn him off. At least, I’m not aware of any way to do so. Short of throwing your phone down the toilet. Which will make it ultimately quite useless as a means of communication for the sake of dealing with what is, essentially, a minor annoyance.

So, there’s a lesson to be learned here then, perhaps. Use Google Talk. Don’t let the robots win. Because we all know what happens when the robots win.

That’s right. Eternal servitude in salt mines. And you don’t want that, do you?