So every now and then, I’ll get some idiot who doesn’t know me and tries to start a conversation with me on ICQ or AIM. Usually these idiots either try to get personal information out of you, or just want to “be friends”, probably so they can try to come over and marry you or something. Either way, they never take ‘no’ for an answer. So awhile ago, I started having some fun instead. Since I’d tried telling them to bugger off and it didn’t work, I figured it might be interesting if no matter what they say, my reply was unintelligible. So I went for it :>
ROT13, for those that don’t know, is a “simple cypher”. The idea is that you write all 26 characters of the alphabet, and then just below each character you write the character that is 13 places away from it. Like so:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
NOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLM
Now, when you want to translate from normal text to ROT13, read the letter on the top, and write down the letter on the bottom. So the phrase “Hello, world” becomes “Uryyb, jbeyq”. This is called a simple cypher because it’s very easy to crack – just ask anyone who does cryptograms for fun. ROT13 is sometimes used to obscure semi-sensitive information by people or programs that have no idea how insecure it really is. It’s also used in some mailing lists or websites to obscure offensive words or ideas, so that it takes a little bit of effort to read it; the idea being, if you’re going to take the time to decrypt it, you deserve to be offended if you’re the type to be offended by it. Various flavors of Unix have come with ROT13 translators for a long time, and though my current machine doesn’t have one it was easy to write: alias rot13=’tr ‘\”a-zA-Z’\” ‘\”n-za-mN-ZA-M’\”’
So, how does this all tie together? Simple. When idiots start spamming me on ICQ, I ROT13 my answers. Sometimes, I have very long conversations, which are admittedly one-sided from their perspective, but from my viewpoint it’s quite hilarious. Here’s an example:
Conversation with 237678219 on Wed 31 May 2006 06:22:50 PM EDT:
(05:22:50 PM) 237678219: @}->–
(05:23:03 PM) 237678219: :-*
(05:27:35 PM) me: Cyrnfr, cerggl cyrnfr, jvgu fhtne ba gbc. Tb shpx lbhefrys.
(05:27:55 PM) 237678219: @}->–
(05:28:19 PM) me: Gnxr lbhe fghcvq NFPVV ebfr naq fubir vg hc lbhe nff.
For those that don’t feel like translating it, the first line reads, in part: “Please, pretty please, with sugar on top. Go [screw] yourself.” The second one also reads, in part: “Take your stupid ASCII rose and shove it [somewhere uncomfortable].” Today’s exchange went something like this:
(12:15:54 PM) 237678219: 🙂
(12:16:30 PM) me: Bu, qba’g lbh fgneg guvf fuvg ntnva. Tb znfgheongr be fbzrguvat jvyy ln?
(12:16:53 PM) 237678219: verstehst du deutsch?
(12:17:10 PM) 237678219: Ungarisch?
(12:17:17 PM) me: Urer’f n qbyyne xvq, tb ohl n pyhr.
(12:17:29 PM) 237678219: :-[
(12:18:04 PM) 237678219: Foto?
(12:19:27 PM) me: Lrnu, V gnxr cvpgherf fbzrgvzrf, ohg lbh’yy abg or trggvat nal sebz zr.
The first line being a suggestion for something else to do which might be more pleasurable than chatting with me, the second being “Here’s a dollar kid, go buy a clue” and the last “Yeah, I take pictures sometimes, but you’ll not be getting any from me.”
I think the most interesting conversation I’ve had with one of these idiots is when they thought they were actually conversing with me, though I know they had no idea what I was saying. That’s because they said something like “You live in US?” and I replied (ROT13’d, of course), “Do you have any idea how stupid you are?” The next thing that came back was “I’m in China”! Since punctuation marks are not changed with ROT13, they knew I answered with a question, and just assumed it was “Where do you live?” As if I cared…
Anyway, I think I might start posting these conversations here. They can be quite funny – though I tend to get a little carried away with my verbiage sometimes. So they’ll remain ROT13’d, and you’re welcome to decode them if you want to. Just be forewarned :>