I can’t remember when in recent times I have laughed as much as I did over the past couple of days! Quite by accident, along with a group of other Iranian.com users, I managed to have myself one non-stop party, hanging out with good friends and completely neglecting my life for a couple of days!
It all started when admin announced that the long-awaited chat feature of the site had been installed on a trial basis. I have deliberately given up instant messaging for a couple of years now, because I know from experience that once you get sucked into this chatting business, it’s really hard to give it up. Anyhow, I went to see the new, as-yet-test-version of the chat feature, and I stuck around to help “test” it by attempting to break it! First with Jahanshah and later on with admin, I managed to find out some interesting things about the software, reporting my findings to admin. As I stayed intermittently online, other curious users dropped in and I tried to help them learn their way around the software. When I returned from a meeting at around 6:00 p.m. on Monday, I rejoined the chat session and continued to bang away at it; only this time there were a few other ba hal users present and we started an impromptu inaugural party for the chat section! We were passing drinks, doing chaagh salaamati, and telling jokes. Pretty soon we started putting money in our imaginary jukebox and playing music, too, with participants joining in to sing along and dance. Don’t ask me how we were doing this, you just had to see it for yourselves to believe me! Suffice it to say that when you get a bunch of writers with imagination in a room, albeit virtual, they can get pretty creative imagining props, scenarios, and behaviors!
The party was in full swing by about 8:00 p.m. with TheMrs, Flying Solo, Ali P., Khar, admin, Souri, Mourche, and myself, among others, having tequila shots, singing and dancing in the chatroom, and several other users were dropping in and out to visit, some staying on and some leaving after their curiosity fix. Everybody greeted the newcomers and showed enthusiasm for the party in progress. At this time we got an unexpected visitor—Q! Now all those who follow the political features and blogs know Q to be a pretty serious and steadfast blogger, who is always cordial and polite in his tenacious and articulate arguments. I must admit I have also, on one or two occasions, seen glimpses of Q’s sense of humor, but what usually makes him stand out for me is the nonstop attacks he has received from some users in the past and his uncanny dedication to staying in dialogues and speaking his mind.
When he arrived the chat session on Monday night, people greeted him with delight and he said a few words to greet people back and remained quiet. We could all see his name on the participant list, so we knew he was still around, just not saying much. I tried to welcome him by attempting a joke (but with a qualifier first) about “fancy meeting our ‘resident IRI apologist, etc. etc.’ here!“ (terms he has most unfortunately been called by his least graceful opponents), to which he gave a ho-hum response. I did briefly consider opening my mouth and putting my foot in it, but shrugged the feeling off and continued to offer everyone shots of this and that and passing the mast-o-khiar and nachos plates around instead! Watching the rest of us having such a juvenile and jovial time, in a few more minutes Q made a remark (and unfortunately I can’t remember the exact words he used now), to the effect that the atmosphere in the chatroom appeared somewhat overly jovial, while the atmosphere in the comments section appears too reflective and serious, his remark aimed to highlight the contrast. Shortly after making this observation, he bid us farewell and left. I did regret his veiled disapproval of our conduct, but I didn’t fret over it too much, as we were too busy continuing to party!
The crowd had a really good time and pretty soon they East Coasters started leaving one by one. I was testing the “private chat” feature with Flying Solo. During our chat something bizarre happened! We were talking about writing (honestly!) and I typed the word “sexual” on the message bar and the minute I pushed SEND, the three letters s e x were replaced by asterisks upon transmission! Apparently, the chat software has a filter that detects and masks the word “sex!”
I returned to the main chatroom to find the sleepless East Coasters Ebi Amirhosseini and Ali P. online, chatting with admin. As I had done all day, I relayed my new finding to admin. He was really surprised and we chatted a moment about what other words may be considered no-no’s by the software! So, in reaction to these unfolding findings, our “spontaneous test group” was typing “bad words” to see which ones were filtered. Someone typed “shit,” another typed “boobs,” as yet another typed “tits” and a fourth person proceeded to type “pussy” and “dick,” while a couple of overzealous ones (not me!) started typing Farsi bad words when at this very moment, who should enter the chatroom, but Q! Oh My God! Can you imagine?! He had thought we were frivolous and superficial earlier, and now he had walked right into a scene which must have looked like some “up until yesterday respectable” members of the site were acting seriously badly! For a few seconds we all froze! We didn’t know what to say! Finally I said “Q, I know how this might seem to you, but we were actually testing the software!” to which he simply said: “It’s O.K. Nazy, you don’t have to explain anything!” When I kept trying to explain again, Q said: “I’m not your father!” Oh My God! Things looked really bleak, especially because admin had taken a break and was nowhere to be seen! When admin finally showed up and started saying some geeky, softwary things which backed up our seemingly preposterous claim, things started to look up for us!
Q stayed a bit longer this time and chatted with us, and it was fun talking and joking with him about many things. When he left we didn’t feel as awful as we had earlier! Pheeewwww! That was something else!
Our inaugural celebration continued yesterday, while new users joined us and the “by now locals” came back for another Happy Hour of socializing and laughing. I think admin is getting ready to move the chat test to a more permanent place after this. It was a pleasure to help test the software and to get to know so many of you a little better. I hope you enjoy the experience of chatting with fellow Iranian.com users. As for me, the Inaugural Ball experience will be a lasting and memorable one for a long time to come! Let’s just say some things around here will never be the same again!
P.S. In case you want to try this at home, here’s the chat page: http://iranian.com/main/chat
