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Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
Internet Relay Chat turns 30—and we remember how it changed our lives
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August.
The venerable text-only chat system was first developed in 1988 by a Finnish computer scientist named Jarkko Oikarinen. Oikarinen couldn't have known at the time just how his creation would affect the lives of people around the world, but it became one of the key early tools that kept Ars Technica running as a virtual workplace—it even lead to love and marriage.
To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories. Three long-time Ars staffers share some of their earliest IRC interactions, which remind us that the Internet has always been simultaneously wonderful and kind of terrible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:36AM
For me, I just no longer have the time anymore to hang around randomly chatting on IRC. Real life started getting in the way. Before Uni I could hang around all day on IRC, then when I went to uni (and got a part time job to pay my way), IRC time went down, but due to odd lecture hours I could still hang around at 3am on IRC like I used to. Then the biggie, a "proper" job. Suddenly I had to be out the door at 7am to be at work by 9, to finish at 6 and be home by 8, then by the time I made and ate dinner, etc... it would be 10pm and I would be shattered. IRC was banned at work, and after a long day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was stare at the computer screen some more. Plus could not stay late, because had to wake up early for the daily grind.
It isn't so much that just IRC suffered, my entire online presence has. My personal website was last updated in 2012, and even that post back then had an apology for it being many years since the last update. I don't hang around my old forums, I don't play games anymore. The only sites I really visit and contribute to are soylent and theregister, and even then, my recent chattiness is due to being bedridden after an injury, with not much else for company but the laptop. Usually I just read the articles/comments, and do the odd mod.
Also, when I did get on IRC in recent times, in some chatrooms, I actually got told off for "off topic" chats (With a "friendly" reminder of what the channel topic was about). Once upon a time having an off topic conversation (Sometimes at odd hours in the morning) was fine, as long as nobody was doing an on-topic chat at the same time.
At some point, busybodies took over the chatrooms, and as ops they could ban/kick you, so you kept your mouth shut unless you had something on-topic to say.
Interestingly, before I left fb, I started seeing the same thing on their groups. I would get told off for not being on topic, or because I replied to a thread that was older than the admin thinks is right for a good "curated" page. Quite frankly I told him to get stuffed, as the thread was of interest to me, even if was "yesterdays thread". I got banned, and shortly after left fb too (and don't regret leaving one bit).
The best IRC chatrooms (in the sense of the "old IRC" I remember from my youth), were in private IRC servers off the main IRC network. I used to hang out on such IRC servers, which were bustling with all kinds of conversations, including ones completely irrelevant to the channel topic (minus a few strict channels, but there were for support or other important stuff). Which reminds me, Soylent has an IRC server. I think I might pop in when I am next free and see how things are there.
IMO to help have a chatty channel, (a) for IRC admins/channel creators, don't allow many channels on the IRC server (forces more people together, increasing the likelyhood of a conversation breaking out), and (b) for IRC users, don't be members of too many channels. If you are monitoring 100 different channels, you will be spending more time monitoring them then interacting with whoever is on each channel.