I have some of those anecdotes that I wouldn’t want to remain forgotten. The basic idea of this blog is to write them down so as to save them from oblivion, but it’s only about the anecdotes that may be told.
Unfortunately, most of them are not supposed to be told because they’re about my clients, public authority figures, chief executives, politicians and the like. What follows is an anecdote which is proper to narrate.
Place setting: Belgrade.
Time setting: sometime in the 1990s.
At that time, the Internet was still in its infancy. To access the Internet, you had to prepay hours in order to connect to the Web through a modem and a phone. Back then, I had a successful global Web shop that I ran from my own bedroom. The business was going great, and I was successfully breaching the international sanctions, because economic sanctions against Serbia were in force then.
Well, one of those days, I went out for a coffee with three ex-classmates of mine. We hadn’t seen each other ever since we were at elementary school. For the purpose of the story, we’ll call them Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
In those days, Huey was attending university, Dewey was a taxi driver, and Louie was working for an intelligence service. Anyway, the story starts off with my explaining them what I was doing on the Internet. They were not particularly familiar with the Internet and computers, so it was difficult to explain what exactly I was into. However, during our conversation, the cell phones wouldn’t stop ringing for all three of them, and they were constantly talking with some girls. Each of them had conversations with up to two or three girls, although they weren’t really the Don Juan type of men.
I thought it was so fascinating that I had to ask what it was about and how come all those girls. Where ever did they find them? The answer was – on the Internet. I said, “Wait a minute, man, I make my living on the Internet, but I haven’t seen a single chick anywhere!” and then, they laughingly told me of mIRC and IRC channels (a kind of online chatting) and about the method they had for making a pass at chicks. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the anecdote I’d like to tell is about one of those three friends of mine – about Louie.
Working for an intelligence service, Louie purchased a computer on installments so that he could do “the mIRC-ing thing”. Up to then, he’d worked at his friend’s place on his friend’s computer, and now, he decided he had to improve his technique. He arranged with me to help him connect the computer and set up the system, and I arranged with him to show me how to use the mIRC programme. In a few hours, we managed to put up the system, install the programme, and he explained me all the secrets of “the trade”.
A few days later, I was typing via mIRC when the phone rang, and it was Louie calling, completely panic-stricken: “Man, I’ve had a fight with a bloke via mIRC, and he threatened to send me a virus and burn my computer down! I turned the computer off and pulled the cords out of the modem and power socket. Can he do me any harm now?” It’s needless to say that I died laughing.
Of course, we urgently arranged to meet for a coffee, to consult and see what had happened. We actually burnt his ass by taking the piss out of him.
Here’s what happened. On the mIRC, Louie’s nickname was Shadow, and under that nickname, he flirted with chicks. But then, one day, when he logged on mIRC, to his surprise, he realized that his nickname was taken over by someone else. Well, now, he got angry, and typed to the other guy: chick“Man, it’s not decent to steal my nickname. Shadow is my nickname!” to which the other one answered back, so they started bickering instantly, addressing threats to one another. Nevertheless, this other bloke was more experienced on the Internet than Louie, and had a look at Louie’s profile. On the other hand, Louie, filling out his profile form, and lacking experience, wrote everything neatly: his first name, surname, address, telephone number…
The guy said: “Hey, Louie Peterson, don’t make me come over there at 33 Savska Street, and then I’ll… blah-blah”. Louie was shocked at how the guy knew all that, and addressed him in a reverse manner: “Alright, man – sorry. Don’t be a knocker. Don’t be hard-hearted”. Then, the other one wouldn’t give up: “There is no excuse now. No way, mister. I’ll teach you a lesson when I send you a virus, and burn your computer down.” And that was when all the chaos started: Louie shut his computer down, unplugged it, and called me for help. 
Nearly a year later, not having seen one another for half a year again, we were sitting in a café, talking, and the mIRC incident seemed to have long been forgotten. But, Louie’s phone rang, and, while we were discussing things, he was mumbling something into the phone. We kept on talking until the moment when I began to figure out his words, and understood that he was threatening to somebody, saying something like: “Motherf******…! Tell my where you are, you, stinking c***head, and I’m coming to get you!” and, in a little while, he hung up, and went on talking to us perfectly normally.
Louie is otherwise a complete do-gooder, a great friend, such a good boy, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Feeling shocked, I said: “Man, who did you talk to like that?” And, that was when Huey and Dewey burst into laughter, and told me that I wasn’t up to date, not knowing what a tough guy Shadow was, and that he’d been haunting and frightening that guy just as a shadow for a year then.
Back then, Louie decided to take revenge on that bloke, and through his IP address and the service which he worked for, he found out all the details about the bloke: his first name, his surname, his address, his wife’s name, where he worked, his working hours, his phone number… everything. And that was when he started to phone him for months, threatening that Shadow would be the end of him. It was apparent that the roles had been reversed, and now, the other guy spoke in this way: “Come on, man. Don’t be a knocker. Sorry! How much longer is this going to go on?!”
The moral of this fable is – kids, take caution when on the Internet.
