Shortly after I started blogging back in the dark ages of 2003, one of my blog friends would talk about her group on IRC, which is short for Internet Relay Chat. There were hundreds of text-based, IRC chat rooms.
One evening, I decided to try her group and found the natives very friendly, for they kept sending me lots of love. Not being totally stupid, I did soon come to realize that they were, in point of fact, laughing out loud. I couldn't hear them, but that is what they were telling me although I didn't think that I was being terribly funny. I guess it was better than roflmao, but can't even say for sure if that was yet an acronym in those early years.
Now, I am somewhat surprised to learn than IRC still exists for it is the internet browsers that became the only internet program that most of us have ever used, at least for about two decades now.
As of June 2021, there are 481 different IRC networks known to be operating, of which the open source Libera Chat, founded in May 2021, has the most users, with 20,374 channels on 26 servers; between them, the top 100 IRC networks share over 100 thousand channels operating on about one thousand servers.As I understand it, you still require a special client/program to access IRC, and it exists outside of where browsers go. A program called mIRC was the one that I used then, and I have learned that it still exists.
There was also Usenet, which, if I recall correctly, did not involve chat rooms but was where one could follow chat topics. I didn't use that one much either, but, like IRC, somewhat surprisingly to me, it still exists.
Usenet is a set of protocols for generating, storing and retrieving news "articles" (which resemble Internet mail messages) and for exchanging them among a readership which is potentially widely distributed.The Internet Browser became the only online app that most of us need or want. In other words, we have lots of love for it.
17 comments:
I have never heard of those chat rooms. Don’t mess with what works is my motto.
I was in chat rooms like this in the mid nineties. One had the weird ability to delete other people's comments, even in general chat! Except when anyone did it, they never heard the end of it.
Love that cartoon! Funny! I used to visit City Pub, a chat room, based on the mainland. I chatted as gigi-hawaii for about 2 years, ending in 1997. I even met up with a group of City Pub chatters, whom I invited to see me and David in Las Vegas. Lots of fun! I started blogging in 2006 and enjoy the format more than that of a chat room.
This is the first I've heard of them. I wasn't in any chat rooms, I was involved is a forum called Horses Midwest and then Midwest Horse Talk. I started blogging in 2008. I have never used LOL, don't ask me why.
I have never understood abbreviations like LOL, FOMO, IMO, OMG and so on.
God bless.
I occasionally use LOL but try to stay away from too many abbreviations. It's difficult to add tone or emotion to text without some kind of symbol though. I remember the old AOL chatrooms. I still have a couple friends with .aol emails.
Ah, the good old days!!!
I remember chat rooms on AOL, and not knowing what lol meant.
Not sure where I've been, but never heard of IRC. About the only think I know for sure is that technology has been, and continues to, change fast!
During that time, I spent day and night in photography gear fora debating about lenses and cameras like fan boys. Nostalgic about the time. Now forum is a dead space.
It's a long winding road to where we are today.
I always see acronyms that I have no idea what they mean. I steer clear!
Gee, those were the olden days. I was in a knitting chat room. That's where I learned about Michelangelo's perfect man, and I only thought I was knitting socks.
I never heard of IRC, although I did know about chat rooms. Beginning in 1996 I was a member of several listeners, though. Remember those? Some, like the Storytell listserv, are still around. That group was my crash course in professional storytelling, and I still have many friends I made there.
*listservs. Dang autocorrect!
You do educate me. Never heard of these.
You do educate me. Never heard of these.
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