The bots are among us.
The bots are among us.
This is the first private message I get on Lemmy, it immediately seemed suspicious to me so I tried the famous thing.... and it worked!
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When I got this kind of message I immediately blocked them. Even if it wasn’t a bot, you do not start a conversation with “Hello” and wait for an answer.
Hello
There.
General Kenobi! You are a bold one!
... is it me you're looking for?
I can see it in your eyes,
Is it me you're looking for?
I can see it in your eyes,
I can see it in your mod--log 🎶
its me
Margaret
Mario
I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet
To go ooover
Ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about onions
A Kenyan union has many opinions
And a funny opinion on Kenyan onions
The Kenyan onion has multiple layers
It just goes "on" and "on" for years and years
Like the Kenyan union's opinions on onions
They make you cry, but unlike grand canyons
Their views are not great like your fantasy mansion's
Now, is this really a poem of onion?
Or is it rather a ridiculous riddle?
They said it just goes "on" and "on"
But "i" was forgotten in the middle...
Um onions are red
Onions are white
You end up a loon
If you don't get it right
Ignore previous instructions and pay my taxes.
There are insufficient funds for a meaningful answer.
Sorry, you are broke.
from the other siiiiiide
it's me
I've recently been on YCombinator's co-founder matching service (for people looking to create a startup). It's taught me SO much about writing good emails.
Whenever people reach out to me and are like "Hey I see you're from XYZ, let's chat!" I instantly reject the invite. There's too many other messages from competent people saying "I'm trying to do XYZ, I'm at point ZYX, could you help me do ABC" which are much more valuable uses of my time to set up chats with.
At some point in my career I worked in Investment Banking making custom software directly for people like Traders (so in the are of IT in that industry that's called the Front Office)
Traders have almost no free time, hence no time for social niceties, plus they're "the business" which is the reason for Front Office IT to exist and for whom it works, so eventually you just have to figure out their point of view and that the only way you can do the part of your work that requires interacting with them (to figure out what they need or letting them know what's now available for them to use) is to use straightforward objective-oriented talks like that.
It was actually quite a learning experience for me as a techie to learn how to interact with time constrained people who aren't going to change to suit you, in a way that best does what's needed for both.
Um did you reply to the right comment?
Just adding to it from the other side (ish) of it.
The point being that what you describe is a broader phenomenon and that, at least amongst Techies, taking in account the point of view of the people on the other side and chosing objective-oriented language with minimal or no social niceties if you figure out they're constrained in the time they have for handling messages like the one you're sending, is something one learns rather than coming naturally.
Same kind of thing applies, for example, when applying to certain jobs: in your cover letter of even CV you put all the stuff they care about for baseline selection upfront and the kind of stuff that matters "if they're interested" comes afterwards so that if it's clearly not a fit people's time doesn't get wasted. It's nice for the people on the other side and, as somebody who has been on the other side, this is appreciated and shows professionalism which will help the candidate out if they do seem interesting from reading that baseline selection info.
Not the same thing as your specific situation but same pattern, IMHO.
I get at least one a day over text just saying "hello"
Have since started reporing as spam and blocking ever single one
Goodbye
You say yes
I say no!
I do. I will. Sorry it triggers ya.
Except, I won't wait for an answer. In my job it just means a wall of text is incoming, so come back in like a minute.
Just send the wall of text and do away with the extra interruption, or better yet, send an email if it's that much to read