TheGreatHatsby

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TheGreatHatsby is the name of an AIM bot that instigates conversation between two other AIM accounts. Its name is a play on words from the book The Great Gatsby. It is a relay bot that retrieves the most recently updated LiveJournal posts and obtains the AIM screen name of the posting user. It then sends the user the message "i say, old bean, have you seen my hat?"

Responses from users are then forwarded by the bot to another one of the users similarly contacted. From this both users are typically confused insisting the other messaged them first and try to figure out what is going on.

Any occurrence of ones own true screen name in chat will result in it being replaced with the name of the bot before being sent to the other party. Any occurrence of the name of the bot will be replaced by the screen name of the user on the receiving end.

[edit] Project Upstream

Recently, within the communities in which TheGreatHatsby used to operate, a new set of bots that are colloquially named the "Salmon bots" have appeared. These bots behave similar to TheGreatHatsby[1] but claim no relation to them, rather belonging to a secretive group called Project Upstream. Its opening lines are variable, but the bot itself always uses AIM screen names of the form of "<adjective>salmon".

The Salmon bots show behaviors unique to themselves such as not consistently filtering screen names or key details but doing so on a case-by-case basis. Similarly, they apply filters on the text sent through the bot on a case-by-case basis, transforming it into, as an example, speech resembling that of an archetypal Pirate.

[edit] References

  1. ^ blinovitch: Public Service Announcement: The Salmon Bot

[edit] External links

  • The Missing Hat A LiveJournal community created for discussion of the bot.
  • Riced Out Yugo The site to which the bot's AIM profile links. Its relevance to TheGreatHatsby is unclear.