Saturday, March 15, 2008

HELLO. THIS IS HAT AND BRIEFCASE AND BOXCAR AN CHAIR. IS THE HEN SAFE?
from a 339 phone number, Saturday, March 15, 11:52 AM

Obviously, Leila is a kidnapper, and 399 is her co-conspirator, inquiring into the status of their charge. "THE HEN" is the code name for the kidnapped child. HAT, BRIEFCASE, BOXCAR, and CHAIR are code names for other people in on this kidnapping ring.

Since Leila did not receive this text, and was thus unable to verify the safety of THE HEN, everyone else has gone into Crisis Management Mode, enacting a dangerous Contingency Plan that they had sworn never to try except in the extreme instance that Leila not text them back.


(I don't know if you've ever considered this, but it's exhausting to sit here and make this stuff up all the time.)
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7 comments:

Dink said...

leila, i wanted to send you a message, but i couldn't find a contact. anyway, i wanted to let you know that this exact same thing happens to me when you type in my nickname. i don't want to post it because i don't need any more texts than i already get. but you are not alone! it's the weirdest thing in the world! just letting you know that you're not the only one.

March 16, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Leila Sales said...

Oh my goodness, I've been wanting to meet someone else who has this for SO LONG! I've tried it with a couple of different names-- like addressing a text to "Mollie" that says, "If anyone at all receives this, please text back." But I've never gotten a response.

How often do you get texts from strangers? And do you call them back or ignore them?

March 16, 2008 at 8:47 PM
Dink said...

i get tons, but it can be random. One day I can get say 15 texts from 3 different numbers, then I won't get any for a few days. Sometimes I respond with something like "Sorry, you're texting the wrong person". Occasionally they will write back either confused or with a "sorry". sometimes it goes too far and they actually start to harass me. Do you ever have that problem?

the problem I seem to have is that whomever someone is texting, they seem to be getting the texts as well as me. It's like these people are responding to texts, but for some bizarre reason I'm also getting the answers!

Sorry I'm rambling, I'm just really excited to finally know someone else that's living in text hell! Ha!

Also, I only know about my problem because of this website, so thanks for figuring it out!

March 18, 2008 at 8:42 PM
Dink said...

also, have you ever tried to text "leila" from your own phone? i texted my nickname to my own phone and instead of my #@vtext.com which is how most others come up, it came up as my nickname@vtext.com. very weird!

March 18, 2008 at 8:50 PM
Leila Sales said...

I am so excited that you have found me! I, too, sometimes respond to people and sometimes do not... it sort of depends on what they say in their text. Sometimes they just apologize, but sometimes they keep being like, "Who are you?" And then I have to keep texting back, "It doesn't matter who I am. Just text Leila again, but don't type in her name."

The two things that have always confused me are as follows:

First, I don't know why I'll get a slew of texts from one number, and then never hear from them again. Presumably they have texted Leila before and are continuing to text her going forward-- it's just like this brief window of time where they were typing in her name instead of pulling it up out of their contact list. It would make more sense if the same numbers always texted me, but that's not what happens.

Second, I don't understand why you would type in someone's name in the first place. It takes extra work to change your entry mode from 123 to Abc, and there's no reason to expect that it would work. I've never addressed a text like that, but all these people do! That's the part that most baffles me.

Anyway, I hope you find, even if you're annoyed by all the texts, that it's kind of a cool party trick. Don't you demonstrate it to people all the time?

March 18, 2008 at 11:19 PM
Dink said...

I totally know what you mean, who writes "leila" instead of pulling their name out of their contacts? bizarre. I do have to say, now that I know about this I have told SO many people. It definitely is a cool party trick!

March 18, 2008 at 11:29 PM
Anonymous said...

THIS IS NOT A ROBBER THIS IS MacGyver!

March 22, 2008 at 4:26 AM

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