I miss IRC. I remember back to when I was working at a company that was me, a buddy of mine, and the boss. We rented an office in the lower level of a small building. No windows, no ambient music. Just working away in silence. To keep away and stay sane I kept an IRC window open. Soon there was a small tight knit group of chatters in our # - and later we became friends in meatspace as well.
I remember poking fun at the noobs in #teen and other high drama channels. We developed our own dictionary of slang, entertaining chat bots... essentially we had a culture all our own.
I remember poking fun at the noobs in #teen and other high drama channels. We developed our own dictionary of slang, entertaining chat bots... essentially we had a culture all our own.
But as time passed, meatspace crept in. We all got busier or work changed so IRC access changed. Then social media phone apps drove in the final nail. And now our virtual coffeeshop is just a memory.
The funny thing is, people are still into chat, only now it's on Facebook etc. And it seems like #teen has taken over everything. It's like the vast majority of people online now a days are n00b current affairs trolls. I have yet to find a SINGLE social feed where I can just mindlessly hang out and interact with others. I have a twitter feed of JUST music and development, and I swear every other post that comes through is political or some other kind of drama.
I miss IRC. Where you can just chat and hang out. Where you chat more like you would at a party or in real life. Where no one ever just randomly blurts out:
"I believe in <INSERT CAUSE> and if you have a problem with that just unfriend me now"
If you do that at a BBQ, you're an arse. But apparently it's totally Ok online.
RIP : Chat.
I miss it too. Anonymous if you wanted it to be. No profiles, no signing up unless you wanted to preserve your username with nickserv... Those were the days...
ReplyDeleteYeah :) #linux, #java, #qutebrowser on freenode are still great places to lurk.
ReplyDelete