In late 1999, accompanied by the infamous crackling and clicking sounds of a 56k modem, I joined the elite caste of the internet users. People were talking about the internet every now and then, but frankly I had no clue what was getting myself into. Suddenly I was online.. well.. that‘s… nice! .. I guess? I knew virtually nothing about this technology so I did what I always do: screw the manual – let‘s explore! Before long I discovered that there was a thing called „chatroom“ where users from all over the planet would directly interact with each other (in more or less real time). How do the chatrooms of the „good old days“ compare to what people use in 2019? Well..
The first chatroom I ever joined was called „MysticalRealm“. It was a dreadfully slow CGI/PERL based web-chat which saw itself as a competitor of Alamak, one of the biggest chatrooms available at the time – both running on basically the same software.
The chat was browser based, so there was no need to install any client software. After logging in you usually landed in the main chatroom. There was no user list or room list readily displayed on the page. You had to execute several commands to see who is online and which rooms where available. The whole thing required quit a bit of moderation since it was prone to internet-trolls just flooding the chat with nonsense. One of the more unusual aspects of this type of chat was, that you had to manually refresh the chat window in order to see what the other users were posting. Many a user who was oblivious to that fact just sat there staring at a blank screen, waiting for something to happen.
Before long I discovered the legendary Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC was not as user-friendly for those who just started out in the world of online chatting. You had to download, install and set up an IRC client (like mIRC) which in turn required you to know and execute several commands. For some users this seemed too big of a hurdle so they just went looking for “easier” alternatives such as ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN or AIM. There were easy to use web based clients available, but even with those some users could not be bothered to even learn the simplest commands. However, once you understood the basics of IRC it was a lightweight and powerful chat network and at the time home to millions of users worldwide. To this day IRC remains my favorite chat platform.
Does anyone still remember ICQ?
It actually still exists and my old UIN, which for whatever reason I still remember, is still working. Originally developed by Mirabilis ICQ it was bought by AOL and later by Mail.ru. Platforms like ICQ where focussed on individual peer to peer chatting and not so much on group chats (which I believe where possible, but not very common). Every user was identified by a UIN. Once you added a user to your friends list you could see when they where online and start chatting.
In those days interacting on the internet was a combination of chatting and using discussion forums/message boards. Often a message board would have its own chatroom somewhere on IRC or by means of a browser-based chat plugin. It was the time of deep and lengthy discussions where online communities had a strong bond and several real life gatherings.
Then came social media platforms.
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. Chatting became shorter. It was not really chatting anymore in the sense that you would sit and actively engage another user in real time. The big chat platforms as well as the online discussion boards started to lose users en masse. Life became faster and faster.
With the advent of smartphones – specifically the iPhone in 2007 – everything changed. Chatting is a casual thing now: dropping a few smileys and memes with a flick of your finger. Why type out how you feel or what you think when you can just as well post a sticker on Telegram? It is convenient! You can reach everyone from everywhere anytime. Gone are the days when you would schedule an hour or two in the evening after work, where you would go online and meet all your chat-buddies to engage in fun conversations. It is just there all the time and somehow you just don’t know what to talk about anymore.
Maybe it is me getting older, but I feel like the quality of online conversations and the feeling of community was never greater than in the mid to late 90’s and early 2000’s. Some of my best and lasting friendships where formed online at that time. It felt like the golden days of chatting. We may be more digitally connected than ever but it somewhat feels more empty now.