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Nightmare cyber-cafe 'inmates'

14:20 / 22.02.02

Inspired by the large black woman who seated herself to my right some fifteen minutes ago and has been laughing and talking to the screen ever since. Not in a quiet 'mouthing the words as I write' kind of way but in a LOUD 'shouting into an invisible telephone' manner. Of course, she may be responding to voices only she can hear - but that don't make her constant Beavis & Butthead chuckle any less grating...

Behind me a single fortysomething white male is slightly-too-obviously whispering sweet nothings (sweet sex-talk, really) to some woman somewhere in a chatroom: "No... no, it's quite hard. Getting harder now. Hang on, I need to pee. Don't go away, okay?"

Slightly disturbing being this close to unwashed humanity immersed in its individual cyber-worlds. Doesn't usually impinge on me this much; perhaps I just have a low threshold for being unnerved today.

Anyway, who or what is your nightmare cyber-cafe neighbour?

14:23 / 22.02.02

they surround me at the university computer room. it doesn't matter if i'm barbing or writing my one of my three, yes three, dissertations.
they will have the most annoying ringtone on their mobile; and let it ring *forever* and then when they pick up they will shout to whoever called them. and i mean shout.
it drives me potato-fucking mad.
why can't they talk on their mobile phones outside of the room? it's not some huge trek or nuttin'.
those are the computer-folks i hate.

14:29 / 22.02.02

suds:
"it drives me potato-fucking mad."

That is the greatest thing I've ever read, fucking rock!

Um, sorry, no nutters for you.

Matthew Fluxington

14:36 / 22.02.02

I'm with Saveloy - that's got to be one of the coolest phrases I've heard in a long time. I'm going to make it a personal imperative to drop that into as many conversations as possible....

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:23 / 22.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Saveloy:

That is the greatest thing I've ever read, fucking rock!

Oh, yes. Like all manner of bastards.

15:26 / 22.02.02

It does indeed.

<sigh>

This must be one of the fastest-rotted threads in the world ever...

pointless and uncalled for

15:30 / 22.02.02

Back on the track.

Last time I used a cyber cafe it was this skanky place in Elephant & Castle. Not only was I mortified at the price vs. access speed but the only other person in there at the time was this college kid who's girlfriend had just broken up with him via e-mail who had just dropped into full teen angst mode and asked me and my friends what we thought of the poem he had written to this girl to try and win her back.

I can't remember how it went but it was truly fucking awful.

15:31 / 22.02.02

Okay, now she's quiet because she's sucking her thumb...

pointless and uncalled for

15:33 / 22.02.02

Here, have a big bucket of sympathy.

Matthew Fluxington

15:33 / 22.02.02

Ganesh, you wouldn't happen to be potato-fucking mad about how fast this thread rotted, would you?

[ 22-02-2002: Message edited by: Flux = Triangle Body Mode ]

15:34 / 22.02.02

wait, i didn't coin that term.
wish i did, tho.

15:35 / 22.02.02

No, but I'm gonna have to move soon if this potato-fucking digit-sucking woman doesn't stop chortling disturbingly through her thumb at me...

pointless and uncalled for

15:39 / 22.02.02

OK Ganesh, you now qualify for the tertiary emergency level options.

Reach beneath the desk, taped to the underside you should find spiked shank. use the reflection of your screen to determine accuracy and then with one sharp move ram the shank into the base of her skull.

If you're feeling particularly ninja today you shouldn't even have to look away from the screen and no one will notice that it was you.

15:43 / 22.02.02

Ohhh... the seductiveness of that mental image...

Y'know what I said about gun control? Fuck that, I want one.

15:48 / 22.02.02

Now she's starting to hit the screen with her non-sucked hand. I get enough of this at work. I'm, as they say, outta here...

pointless and uncalled for

15:49 / 22.02.02

Can I interest you in an AK47, good for when you absolutely positively have to kill every muthafucker in the room.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

04:19 / 23.02.02

The worst I ever dealt with was someone who kept coming over to my station and asking if I wanted to log onto the same site and play some game with him, since no one on line would game with him anymore.

And he wouldn't take no for an answer.

He was still asking me as I left the damn place.

05:41 / 23.02.02

I think (unintentinally) this is one of the funniest threads I've read ina long time.
I've only been in a Cyber Cafe once and I had the smae feeings I get evertime I go into a cool and trendy nightclub.
a. I'm too old.
b. Everobody else knows exactly what they're doing, while I flounder around on the edges. (this does my sense of paranoia no good whatsoever)
c. The drinks are incredibly overpiced.

All combined to give me the sneering contempt for my fellow patrons, I usually reserve for; Taxi drivers, People who work on B&Q and 15 year olds who want to be Gangsta rappers. (about 3/4 of the population I think)

11:49 / 23.02.02

I still have 'orrible memories of the St Vincent St Easy Everything in Glasgow. Having already sent my puter off to a new life down south I was left without digital stimulation for a couple of weeks. No problem, I can handle that. Addicted?
So anyway, soon found an EasyEverything. Dirt cheap. Ten pounds for a week of surfing. It was like being back at school though. Tons of wee neds shouting at each other, having fights, giggling about porn. Of course, there were geeks as well so I didn't feel completely out of place but we were out numbered. It was kinda offputting having two fifteen year olds talk, as loud as possible, about the wee bird they were chatting up online. Kinda depressing as well. A quick look at the screens showed that 90% of the folk there were on chat sites...

iratescottishgit

12:15 / 23.02.02

now that i log on from home its not pertinent. when i logged on from uni it was always the neds who thought that they would be cool by telling everyone that they were fluent in conversational Klingon, thankfully i no longer have to suffer them praticing (it sounded like they were clearing their throat with gravel or some other abbrasive substance)

12:45 / 23.02.02

Edward and Tubbs from Royston Vasey have just sat next to me with a cyberwise friend to guide them as all three huddle round the "computer". They are sending local e-mails and wearing attractive and matching navy blue anoraks for the purpose. No, the friend (or perhaps son) is looking at websites with pictures of little girls holding teddy bears (eek!) and putative Ma and Pa taking no part. Pa is reading the score of Die Walkuere and Ma is gazing into meatspace.

The Ride of the Valkyries just came blasting through my headphones (tuned to Radio) - how spookily synchronous is that? Probably the Greenland Posse, finally here to conquer London, and they're interfering with my radio signal.

What is it with the parties of spectators in Internet Cafes? If people aren't going online, why are they there? Surely not to spectate or to ogle at the talent? Quick check round 360 degrees and only one semi-shaggable male in evidence out of about a hundred. When Big G was going online and I couldn't be arsed, I'd do something else. Certainly wouldn't sit about among the serried rows of cybernibblers just to breathe in the nerdful atmosphere...

The EasyInternet talent quotient will instantly jerk a spike when Lord Ganesh eventually gets here through the inclement Winter weather. Yay - he's here... Off I go

04:43 / 24.02.02

my pet cyber cafe hate is when two friends sit either side of me and lean forward and yell 'conversation' across my face, as in 'you are so in our fucking way'.

and internet 'cafes' themselves piss me off when there's not a cuppa coffee to be seen anywhere, and when the computers are battery-hen, elbow bashingly close....

00:10 / 25.02.02

... but isn't all this better than not having them at all? Admittedly, where I live, public libraries typically have free internet access, although access time is fairly limited by the small numbers of machines, and universities include it as part of the tuition, ... but good, public cybercafes don't really exist in most small u.s. cities ... further evidence that everyone here--to be "anyone"--has to have her own 1) house 2) car 3) computer, despite the wastefulness of all this private ownership.

What can I say; I fell in love with london this past week and have been trying to find a scheme where I could somehow move there ... i know it's a bit of fantasy and utopian dreaming creating this slightly-soft-focused view of the City, but that's what love's about, no?

(ps what's a "ned"?)
hoo-ray.

00:29 / 25.02.02

I haven't come across any nightmare cyber-cafe inmates and I actually feel like fuck admitting this. The cyber cafe in my country have only teenages playing counterstrike or unreal tournament

12:28 / 25.02.02

My cyber cafe experiences have been relatively pleasant, other than being too chilly or navigating my way round a Czech keyboard, but those things can be dealt with.

Back in the EARLY days of the internet, however, I used to log on to my BBS via the University of Iowa library, and man was this nerd row. There was ALWAYS somebody talking to the computer and chuckling mysteriously at the screen. Usually more than three people. Most of them were busy mushing and muding, and you know, I had cooler things to do like talk about the Beastie Boys and how to get into the Kama Sutra "dirty" forum on the BBS.

But it was not without charm in that old computer room. Or maybe it's just the memory is getting fuzzy...

theskunkymonkey

13:00 / 25.02.02

I'll have you know that there is nothing wrong with shouting at computer screens - i do it all the time. Although my new favourite is holding the mouse to my face and yelling instuctions to my computer that way...

09:54 / 26.02.02

Hmm, okay. 1am and some male just screamed "Outside - now!" at another. Cue scuffling and sound of glass breaking. Everyone in easyInternetCafe gets up to rubberneck. Tt.

pointless and uncalled for

10:46 / 26.02.02

See what happens when geeks get mad. Nobody stood around them and chanted "fight fight fight........"

10:51 / 26.02.02

"Break 'is glasses, Colin!"

"Leave it, Malcolm, he's not worth it."

It was, all things considered, something of a gimpy fight. Entertaining, though, in a vaguely-ashamed-to-be-interested way.

hanabius yamamura

09:11 / 28.02.02

g.v.4.2

you're gonna batter me .......... but .... you can be somewhat ....nippy in the cyber-caf!

hanabius yamamura

09:12 / 28.02.02

ps .. you're still lovely though ........

09:12 / 28.02.02

There's "nippy" and there's "frankly, loudly psychotic".

(Have I ever actually been in a cyber-cafe with you? I don't remember...)

[ 28-02-2002: Message edited by: Ganesh v4.2 ]