A long long time ago, Robbie Williams had his own chatbox. And due to the fact that he sometimes showed up himself, it was pretty busy. As massive Robbie Williams fans, we didn't want to miss the opportunity to chat with the man himself, so my friend D. and myself made a schedule. You could say we were kinda addicted. There were 3 rooms and we would mostly hang out in the Lyrical room, the room with the most down to earth fans. The main room was full with the hysterical fans and room 3? Mostly empty :)
Once in a while, mostly in the middle of the night, Robbie would show up. And we knew it was him because his nick was Robbie and his name was in white, a colour and name nobody else could pick. When he showed up in one of the rooms, everyone would move to that room until it was full. (He would never show up in the empty room, because nobody would notice him). He would reply to some questions and maybe go private and lurk. For the sake of imagining how that would look on a computer screen...it was a bit like the green waterfall of the matrix on steroids. Almost impossible to keep track of what was said.
One day, I noticed something weird. Someone was able to pick a color that wasn't on the list. Curious as I am, I needed to know more. And yeah, back in the days, websites weren't very secure. So I wasn't all that surprised to find that there was a way around the white restriction. And if the text goes too fast, would you notice the weird way of typing "Robbíe"?
I am not the person to abuse these things (really, cross my heart!). But the prankster in me was too eager to let it go. I told my friend D. what I had discovered. We went to the empty room, I changed name and color and rejoined the room.
Suddenly I was "White Robbie" and she had some alone time with "the man". It made us childishly giddy and then she wanted to swap...
So I have a computer science degree, but D. has not and never will. So I called her on the phone and explained to her step by step how to do it and told her to come back to the room we were in. "Are you sure we should do it?", she was getting nervous. "Yes", I told her. Halfway my sentence "As long as you stay in this room, nobody will ...." I suddenly saw "White Robbíe" enter the main room. On the phone a voice started to panic "Uhoh.... oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck....how do I get out of here? HELP!!!! Oh NOOOOOOOO". The full room dove on top of the fake Robbie. And my friend was closer to throwing her computer out the window, than just hitting "sign out".
"White Robbie" became a thing shortly after, only for the insiders. While Robbie's appearances became pretty rare and rooms became more empty, the fake one would show up for birthdays of fans to give lapdances. And for the people in the main room? They will never know why Robbie showed up to immediately disappear from that room without saying a word. The chat room was closed shortly after...