I’ve had to remove my iChat/AOL Instant Messenger screen name from my already fairly outdated About page because in the past month or two, I’ve become the victim of some pretty frequent IM spamming. There’s nothing interesting or clever about this junk advertising, aside from the fact that it gets delivered over a previously spam-free communications channel; in fact, it’s probably among the more banal and least innovative ways of capitalizing on a new medium that I’ve seen.

Though these intrusions haven’t quite reached the level of complete annoyance, I can see it heading that way, definitely. It’s too bad, too, because by making my screen name publicly available, I’ve been contacted by several really nice, interesting people whom I otherwise wouldn’t have met. Anyway, I’m still reachable via email, and I want to say that if you’re a perpetrator of IM spam, all I can say is that you’re kind of a dick.

Icon Camp

On a more useless, still IM-related note: Earlier this week I switched the icon that’s displayed anytime I chat with someone else. I’ve been using the old one for two years, but on a whim, I opted instead for this picture of Adam West’s Batman. There’s something kitschy about this icon that pleases me, but I think more than anything, it reminds me of being a kid in suburban Maryland, running home every day after school and tuning my TV to WBFF in Baltimore. They used to broadcast the old “Batman” show every afternoon, and in the days before cable, I could only ever get a snowy, unstable picture because our house was so far out of reach of the channel’s broadcast tower. Those were the days….