I'm placing this at the few sites I know I've posted contact info before.

Someone I didn't know messaged me through my AIM contact trying to get me to click on a link to a scam site. So... for anyone messaging me for an OCTGN game, if you are not in my buddy list, please make sure you tell me who you are and that its for agot. You'll find me significantly more friendly then if you start off with "yo" or "hey".

(Stag Lord is an exception since I would assume anyone using an aim account named "staglord" is impersonating him. He still tries to organize games by posting to rec.games.octgn. I don't think he's young enough to know about IRC, or ICQ... let alone AIM ).

And for you "kids" out there (Since I'm 2 years away from being a geezer myself)...

Usenet predates the web... its a service that people post to similar to email and forums and they get propogated asynchronously across multiple servers, they were organized by groups but I think only the alt.sex and the alt.binaries groups are left. Google groups archives the posts.I believe the first users were cavemen, and the first group was oog.awk.sed.cave_paintings (the second was alt.sex.hamsters).

IRC - Internat Relay Chat. Some of you may call it mIRC (which is just a popular client) - its chatroom software, predates Instant Messaging, and possibly the web. It's still used by programmers, fansubbers, and for illegal distribution... since servers are spread out... and it's hard to keep track of what goes on in IRC, so you can call it the undernet of the internet. I think the only reason it's not as blocked is because a large amount of the developers of linux, apache (web server), and other essential tools to keep the web going use it for collaboration and support.

ICQ - Predates AIM, your username was a number... it got merged with AIM rather around 2001 or so.

AIM - AOL Instant Messenger... remember when connecting was through a phone... and you chose either AOL, CompuServ, Prodigy? Oh right you probably dont.