Wednesday, 20 April 2016

It Would Be Funny If...

... it were not so sad.

My cousin and I are spending a few days with our friend DeForest.
We've been observing the world together and trading plot bunnies, and it's been great.

And then the world's nuttiness caught up with him.
Nothing bad, but it makes you wonder how silly bipeds can be...
For a few months, some idiot in California has been giving De's address to several companies (Microsoft, Netflix, a dating site, a car seller, etc). He even gave De's address to a charming woman apparently quite fond of him, who contacted De (being the gentleman that he is, he pointed out the mistake - and didn't even get a "Thank you!").
De's address is "yadda" dot "yadda" dot "yaddayaddayadda" @gmail.com, and since the bloody geniuses at Google don't care about the dots and they don't make any difference, De's been getting messages sent to yaddayaddayaddayaddayadda@gmail.com, which is the address that the Californian idiot has been distributing around.
Seriously, that bloke's lucky that my friend's nice or he could have completely messed up with his dating profile since the company had sent the non-encrypted password to De.

After getting yet another message from the car selling company, De blew a fuse and e-mailed them to point out the mistake made by that guy.
He quickly got an answer... with an offer to help him if he wants to buy a car (he'd said that he isn't in the US!).
Gosh! He turned the sarcasm font on, answered the message, and unsubscribed himself from everything he ever received from that company (they're one sandwich short of a picnic in my book).

I'm a good friend. I gave De a plot bunny inspired by the incident, and he's having fun on my laptop...
We're writers. We turn the strangeness of the world into stories.

Bonus for me: I get to edit the story, and he'll probably never spot this post since he's mostly only reading newspapers online... *mwaha* (if he spots it, I'll give him another plot bunny... ^_^)

2 comments:

Ruan Peat said...

now I feel vaguely guilty for my own past use of a fairly generic email to avoid using my own! :-) happy bunny feeding.

Lanor said...

Oops? ^_^
Fairly generic works (I gave variations of existing addresses to people I wanted out of my life), but his addy is *quite* specific (and not related in any way to the "thief"/idiot).
We can't even begin to imagine how and why he gives an address that's not his (the dating site e-mails were particularly disturbing <- plot bunnyyyyyy!).

The plot bunnies aren't only in my flat; my whole district's a nest of plot monsters: my street is gossip central and observing people is quite something, and a few days ago, we witnessed an argument between two blokes in the building in front of mine. Merlin! It was like watching a trust crash between friends (De's theory) or lovers (my plot bunny) - their choreography was properly mesmerizing! *grin*
I think he'll leave town with half a dozen beasts in his bag...