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Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with people I barely knew. There's n

by donatj 1y ago

Mildly reminds me how being online on AIM or ICQ was an actual invitation to chat. I had so many interesting conversations with people I barely knew. There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once great about online communication.

s0rce 1y ago
Discord, sort of, but its not as personal and its not as clear who is actually present.
wildpeaks 1y ago
I still miss the unique ICQ green/red lists feature, it would let you control who can see you're online without a second account.
Spooky23 1y ago
Inreally enjoyed that, especially on ICQ. My first real job was a night operations role at a reservation services company, managing incidents and doing database maintenance work. There was alot of waiting involved, and I would chat on icq with a lot of random people in Europe. I ended up meeting one person! The problem is… people are people and do nasty things. I have a good friend who is a few years younger. She found herself on the “information superhighway” at 13-14, blue collar parents who had no idea what she was doing alone on AIM or what that was. She find herself meeting this charming guy… who happened to be in his 30’s. Learning about how common that was was very sobering… as this thing that represented fun and friends to me ended up being malevolent to many.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Discord indicates who's online with the green dot. It can be modified to never show you're online, or show 'away' or something, but it's similar. It also displays how many are online in a channel on a server, and then you can open the list. Despite that, however, it still feels 'different' to how it was, but I think we're also 'different'. Being (significantly) older now I have more responsibilities and pressures for my time so I'm less likely (like zero chance) to be sitting idle waiting for random chats. We'd have to ask those who are, now, the age we were then - but then they also have no frame of reference. My son is often chatting to his friends online, but I think they're exclusively friends from meatspace rather than electronic strangers.
BrenBarn 1y ago
Yeah, I've thought this for a while now. It's like it used to be you either were available to chat or you weren't, but now it's like everyone is half-available at all times. I agree with other commenters that the fact that you had to be sitting at a desktop was also a factor. Finishing what you were doing and logging into AIM (or taking down your away message) was the equivalent of opening your door, going into the lounge/breakroom, etc. --- a signal of openness to interaction.
ljlolel 1y ago
You can on Hangout.fm since it’s about live music
kqr 1y ago
Huh, coming from an IRC and email background I have the opposite reaction. Rather than having to wait until someone is online it is much nicer to just type to them and they'll respond once they can. Everyone is open all the time!
- al_borland 1y ago
  Some people used AIM like this as well, at least I did. I left my computer on all the time, so I was always online. I was in college during the peak of AIM and it was useful to know who was at their computer or not, which I believe was still viable. Around meal times, we could quickly scan for who was around to see if they wanted to head down to the cafeteria. If they weren’t around, there was no point it asking. For time sensitive messages, online status matters.
  - thesuitonym 1y ago
    AIM also had useful states. If you were away for a decent chunk of time (And you could configure what that amount of time was!) it would mark you as idle, and you could set custom away messages (That were actually visible) so folks could know why you were away, or more realistically, what song was on your mind. Nowadays the status is completely meaningless. It's a small dot that doesn't accurately reflect your status, and if you choose to set a message, most of the apps hide it anyway.
dkersten 1y ago
I remember the early days of Skype and Google talk, calling random strangers and… actually having a conversation with them. I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger, but were almost always happy to chat anyway!
- donatj 1y ago
  I've used the username "donatj" basically everywhere since the late 1990s with just a couple exceptions. Dude beat me to it on Skype, I called him just out of the blue and had a nice conversation with him, lived in Denmark as I recall. Really friendly guy. I can't imagine doing that now though, let alone the person on the other end actually picking up.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Sounds exactly like ham radio operators.
  - emacdona 1y ago
    Heh, I came here to say this when I saw the top level thread that started this comment. As far as GP is concerned: > I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger That's probably the only thing different about Ham radio. Random calls are kinda the norm :-) I got my license less than a year ago, and in some ways, it reminds me of the "old internet" * Way fewer ads. In fact, in ham radio, you aren't allowed to advertise. Maybe the absolute best thing about it. Without a legislative change, there will never be (legal) ads. * Trolls haven't taken over. If you're an ass, you could lose your license. No ham wants to lose their license. * It's as technical as you want to make it. You can go DEEP into technical things (I haven't even scratched the surface there). You can also just get a hotspot and a handheld for a few hundred bucks and be talking to people across the world after an evenings work of configuring it all. If you want to talk to strangers who want to talk back... and who, for the most part, aren't jerks -- get your ham radio license. Bonuses (above and beyond the old internet): Amateur radio clubs are everywhere. They are filled with nerds who love the hobby. They can be _very_ social -- so there is opportunity for plenty of In Real Life (IRL) interaction. Yes, it's mostly guys, mostly over 50, and (in my experience) mostly caucasian. If you are intimidated by that, that's totally fair. But, give them a chance -- check out your local club. Most I've visited are _very_ welcoming... and they want nothing more than to get more people interested in the hobby. [edit: formatting bullets]
bartread 1y ago
Yeah, and the channels that are available... well, here's an example. I'm a member of a couple of professional WhatsApp groups... both of which are so notification heavy that I've permanently muted them, and therefore never visit and as a result derive no benefit from. And, at least for me, there's something about WhatsApp that makes it unamenable to the kind of dip in and out interaction you used to get with IM services. I want to be there when I'm there and not disturbed when I'm not.
- BeFlatXIII 1y ago
  That's the problem with phone apps. They either spam you with notifications or you forget to open them. Desktop IRC clients were more available for passive checking whenever you glanced at the window, but out of the way otherwise.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    You can treat whatsapp as an irc client, it's all in your head :) I have multiple friend groups on whatsapp - i just check them once in a while to see if anything interesting was posted. All the chat apps I'm on are muted and the mute is muted again to make sure.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Yes, If you purposely turn off all notifications on your phone, and/or live on DND mode 24/7, you quickly learn to adapt to this world where using the internet is a deliberate action. Sanity sets in: you are deciding when to use your phone or computer, not an algorithm, or other people. You’re back in the driver’s seat, like it’s 2002 again! It’s very freeing.
      - nottorp 1y ago
        In 2002 i was still turning icq notifications off i think :)
        deleted 1y ago
shark1 1y ago
I have a theory: what was scarce once, is not anymore. Social networks make people tired/satisfied/overwhelmed of "interacting online", and in the worst possible way: passively, not producing anything and just consuming it. It sucks.
- 1980phipsi 1y ago
  Also that a bunch of the time you're contacted by a random online it eventually leads to them trying to get your credit card info.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Lol, I got contacted by a stranger and even after like a year of occasional contact I was waiting for the scam to trigger :D
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    True in real life, too. Whenever someone random comes up to me and tries to engage in a conversation, my guard goes up because 9 times out of 10, they are trying to sell me something or scam me. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a woman, where your “safety” alarms are also sounding. Spontaneous, innocent chit chat is dead, both online and offline because everyone’s hustling now.
    - albumen 1y ago
      Counter example: yesterday I took the train and ferry from london to dublin. Trains are a great way to meet new people, especially if you're sitting facing each other. Person opposite me was interested in the maths book my son was reading. Turns out he's an interrailing applied maths student from Scandinavia. We had a great chat for hours and exchanged numbers. My faith in humanity is not dead yet.
      - zerd 1y ago
        Counter-counter example. When my wife was new to the city she took a bus ride and a girl randomly made contact with her. They hit it off and talked for the whole ride. My wife thought this girl sounds really nice, they actually got into deep conversations, and wanted to exchange numbers so they could hang out some time. Then she asked if she had heard about the book of mormons…
101008 1y ago
This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but basically, it's the idea that the internet used to be offline by default, and now it's online by default. People used to be offline by default. You had to “connect to the internet.” Open MSN, go into forums and check the latest unread messages, come back from a concert and manually upload the photos to your Fotolog or wherever. Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly. Going to a sports event or a concert? You have to post a story to Instagram from that very place, not when you get home. Someone sends you an email or a WhatsApp message? You’re expected to reply as soon as possible. That’s what I miss most about the internet—the idea and the feeling that I would go online when I wanted to, not that I lived inside the internet 24/7.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.
  - RugnirViking 1y ago
    honestly ive been thinking about this stuff too. a hypothetical forum you could only log on to read if you idled on a certain page for 15 mins or something would probably have a lot higher standard of discussion and be a lot better for peoples lives, for example. The most minute of barriers requiring you to deliberately and consciously join and leave...
    - Nition 1y ago
      The SomethingAwful forums have been $10 to join since 2001. If you get banned, that's another $10 needed for a new account. Has worked pretty well for 24 years.
    - reg_dunlop 1y ago
      Reminds me of https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/ which I just learned about. Not exactly the same as your idea, but definitely in the same vein of "only available under a certain condition"
dymk 1y ago
Furries are keeping this dream alive on Telegram
mock-possum 1y ago
There are a billion communities using discord and telegram to do basically what you’re describing - topic rooms, hangout rooms, you can change your online status to signal your willingness to ge sociable.
joseda-hg 1y ago
My group of friends gets something really close to OP, because of our music bot (Which only pings everyone on specific events, like the music queue running out, uncommon enough that it doesn't get annoying, and never more than once a session)
deltaburnt 1y ago
Our friend group's social contract is to sit in a discord channel (even if empty) if you're open to chatting. Unfortunately we have no real equivalent for text.
cronelius 1y ago
might have to put a green dot on a hat or tshirt and try this irl
cgannett 1y ago
well part of it was there wasnt ^{10}10 = 10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10}}}}}}}}} more interesting things than chatting with your friends to do online
godot 1y ago
Would anyone still use a desktop-only (no mobile) messenger where you have to run/turn on intentionally (not always-on like most mobile-first messengers nowadays), lists online/offline friends the way AIM/ICQ did, and you can only send messages with online friends? I get that most leisure computing has moved off of desktop to mobile in modern days, but there's definitely enough of us nerds who're on a computer a lot (even if just for work, if nothing else). It can't be any less than in the late 1990s when ICQ was popular.
- jrmg 1y ago
  I think it probably is less. I’d hang out on my laptop in the evenings and mornings (like, while watching TV or reading news when eating breakfast) in a way I don’t now. I use my iPad or phone now. I do wonder, though, if there’s a gap for a messenger app that runs only while in the foreground in your phone [edit: or tablet or computer!] - or maybe until you next lock the screen, so you can ‘be online’ only while reading, playing a game, or doomscrolling.
heresie-dabord 1y ago
This might interest you, it was posted on HN early last year: Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496 (I have no association with the post, the people, or the project.)
- mkl 1y ago
  Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496
caned 1y ago
I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.
vjk800 1y ago
Now that I think about it, that's true. The same of IRC and MSN Messenger. Since being online all the time was not the default state of things, people only turned those applications (or even their computers) on when they actually wanted to chat to other people. When you saw your friend online on one of those, you immediately wrote something to them, even if you didn't really have anything to say, because what was the point of having the application on otherwise?
nuancebydefault 1y ago
I'm open for chitchat and you opened it 9 hours ago
midtake 1y ago
Disagree. There are people open to chitchat right now. They are just young. We just grew old, most of us are having families, and it would be weird to idly chitchat instead of playing your family role.

by donatj 1y ago

s0rce 1y ago

Discord, sort of, but its not as personal and its not as clear who is actually present.

wildpeaks 1y ago

I still miss the unique ICQ green/red lists feature, it would let you control who can see you're online without a second account.

Spooky23 1y ago

Inreally enjoyed that, especially on ICQ. My first real job was a night operations role at a reservation services company, managing incidents and doing database maintenance work. There was alot of waiting involved, and I would chat on icq with a lot of random people in Europe. I ended up meeting one person! The problem is… people are people and do nasty things. I have a good friend who is a few years younger. She found herself on the “information superhighway” at 13-14, blue collar parents who had no idea what she was doing alone on AIM or what that was. She find herself meeting this charming guy… who happened to be in his 30’s. Learning about how common that was was very sobering… as this thing that represented fun and friends to me ended up being malevolent to many.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

Discord indicates who's online with the green dot. It can be modified to never show you're online, or show 'away' or something, but it's similar. It also displays how many are online in a channel on a server, and then you can open the list. Despite that, however, it still feels 'different' to how it was, but I think we're also 'different'. Being (significantly) older now I have more responsibilities and pressures for my time so I'm less likely (like zero chance) to be sitting idle waiting for random chats. We'd have to ask those who are, now, the age we were then - but then they also have no frame of reference. My son is often chatting to his friends online, but I think they're exclusively friends from meatspace rather than electronic strangers.

BrenBarn 1y ago

Yeah, I've thought this for a while now. It's like it used to be you either were available to chat or you weren't, but now it's like everyone is half-available at all times. I agree with other commenters that the fact that you had to be sitting at a desktop was also a factor. Finishing what you were doing and logging into AIM (or taking down your away message) was the equivalent of opening your door, going into the lounge/breakroom, etc. --- a signal of openness to interaction.

ljlolel 1y ago

You can on Hangout.fm since it’s about live music

kqr 1y ago

Huh, coming from an IRC and email background I have the opposite reaction. Rather than having to wait until someone is online it is much nicer to just type to them and they'll respond once they can. Everyone is open all the time!

al_borland 1y ago
Some people used AIM like this as well, at least I did. I left my computer on all the time, so I was always online. I was in college during the peak of AIM and it was useful to know who was at their computer or not, which I believe was still viable. Around meal times, we could quickly scan for who was around to see if they wanted to head down to the cafeteria. If they weren’t around, there was no point it asking. For time sensitive messages, online status matters.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  AIM also had useful states. If you were away for a decent chunk of time (And you could configure what that amount of time was!) it would mark you as idle, and you could set custom away messages (That were actually visible) so folks could know why you were away, or more realistically, what song was on your mind. Nowadays the status is completely meaningless. It's a small dot that doesn't accurately reflect your status, and if you choose to set a message, most of the apps hide it anyway.

dkersten 1y ago

I remember the early days of Skype and Google talk, calling random strangers and… actually having a conversation with them. I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger, but were almost always happy to chat anyway!

donatj 1y ago
I've used the username "donatj" basically everywhere since the late 1990s with just a couple exceptions. Dude beat me to it on Skype, I called him just out of the blue and had a nice conversation with him, lived in Denmark as I recall. Really friendly guy. I can't imagine doing that now though, let alone the person on the other end actually picking up.
IAmBroom 1y ago
Sounds exactly like ham radio operators.
- emacdona 1y ago
  Heh, I came here to say this when I saw the top level thread that started this comment. As far as GP is concerned: > I remember they were always confused and surprised to get a random call from a stranger That's probably the only thing different about Ham radio. Random calls are kinda the norm :-) I got my license less than a year ago, and in some ways, it reminds me of the "old internet" * Way fewer ads. In fact, in ham radio, you aren't allowed to advertise. Maybe the absolute best thing about it. Without a legislative change, there will never be (legal) ads. * Trolls haven't taken over. If you're an ass, you could lose your license. No ham wants to lose their license. * It's as technical as you want to make it. You can go DEEP into technical things (I haven't even scratched the surface there). You can also just get a hotspot and a handheld for a few hundred bucks and be talking to people across the world after an evenings work of configuring it all. If you want to talk to strangers who want to talk back... and who, for the most part, aren't jerks -- get your ham radio license. Bonuses (above and beyond the old internet): Amateur radio clubs are everywhere. They are filled with nerds who love the hobby. They can be _very_ social -- so there is opportunity for plenty of In Real Life (IRL) interaction. Yes, it's mostly guys, mostly over 50, and (in my experience) mostly caucasian. If you are intimidated by that, that's totally fair. But, give them a chance -- check out your local club. Most I've visited are _very_ welcoming... and they want nothing more than to get more people interested in the hobby. [edit: formatting bullets]

bartread 1y ago

Yeah, and the channels that are available... well, here's an example. I'm a member of a couple of professional WhatsApp groups... both of which are so notification heavy that I've permanently muted them, and therefore never visit and as a result derive no benefit from. And, at least for me, there's something about WhatsApp that makes it unamenable to the kind of dip in and out interaction you used to get with IM services. I want to be there when I'm there and not disturbed when I'm not.

BeFlatXIII 1y ago
That's the problem with phone apps. They either spam you with notifications or you forget to open them. Desktop IRC clients were more available for passive checking whenever you glanced at the window, but out of the way otherwise.
- nottorp 1y ago
  You can treat whatsapp as an irc client, it's all in your head :) I have multiple friend groups on whatsapp - i just check them once in a while to see if anything interesting was posted. All the chat apps I'm on are muted and the mute is muted again to make sure.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Yes, If you purposely turn off all notifications on your phone, and/or live on DND mode 24/7, you quickly learn to adapt to this world where using the internet is a deliberate action. Sanity sets in: you are deciding when to use your phone or computer, not an algorithm, or other people. You’re back in the driver’s seat, like it’s 2002 again! It’s very freeing.
    - nottorp 1y ago
      In 2002 i was still turning icq notifications off i think :)
      - deleted 1y ago

shark1 1y ago

I have a theory: what was scarce once, is not anymore. Social networks make people tired/satisfied/overwhelmed of "interacting online", and in the worst possible way: passively, not producing anything and just consuming it. It sucks.

1980phipsi 1y ago
Also that a bunch of the time you're contacted by a random online it eventually leads to them trying to get your credit card info.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Lol, I got contacted by a stranger and even after like a year of occasional contact I was waiting for the scam to trigger :D
- ryandrake 1y ago
  True in real life, too. Whenever someone random comes up to me and tries to engage in a conversation, my guard goes up because 9 times out of 10, they are trying to sell me something or scam me. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a woman, where your “safety” alarms are also sounding. Spontaneous, innocent chit chat is dead, both online and offline because everyone’s hustling now.
  - albumen 1y ago
    Counter example: yesterday I took the train and ferry from london to dublin. Trains are a great way to meet new people, especially if you're sitting facing each other. Person opposite me was interested in the maths book my son was reading. Turns out he's an interrailing applied maths student from Scandinavia. We had a great chat for hours and exchanged numbers. My faith in humanity is not dead yet.
    - zerd 1y ago
      Counter-counter example. When my wife was new to the city she took a bus ride and a girl randomly made contact with her. They hit it off and talked for the whole ride. My wife thought this girl sounds really nice, they actually got into deep conversations, and wanted to exchange numbers so they could hang out some time. Then she asked if she had heard about the book of mormons…

101008 1y ago

This is something I've always wanted to write about, and I imagine that someday I'll end up with a long article, but basically, it's the idea that the internet used to be offline by default, and now it's online by default. People used to be offline by default. You had to “connect to the internet.” Open MSN, go into forums and check the latest unread messages, come back from a concert and manually upload the photos to your Fotolog or wherever. Now it's the opposite. We are online by default. The expectation is that we're always connected and respond quickly. Going to a sports event or a concert? You have to post a story to Instagram from that very place, not when you get home. Someone sends you an email or a WhatsApp message? You’re expected to reply as soon as possible. That’s what I miss most about the internet—the idea and the feeling that I would go online when I wanted to, not that I lived inside the internet 24/7.

nemomarx 1y ago
The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all. It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.
- RugnirViking 1y ago
  honestly ive been thinking about this stuff too. a hypothetical forum you could only log on to read if you idled on a certain page for 15 mins or something would probably have a lot higher standard of discussion and be a lot better for peoples lives, for example. The most minute of barriers requiring you to deliberately and consciously join and leave...
  - Nition 1y ago
    The SomethingAwful forums have been $10 to join since 2001. If you get banned, that's another $10 needed for a new account. Has worked pretty well for 24 years.
  - reg_dunlop 1y ago
    Reminds me of https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/ which I just learned about. Not exactly the same as your idea, but definitely in the same vein of "only available under a certain condition"

dymk 1y ago

Furries are keeping this dream alive on Telegram

mock-possum 1y ago

There are a billion communities using discord and telegram to do basically what you’re describing - topic rooms, hangout rooms, you can change your online status to signal your willingness to ge sociable.

joseda-hg 1y ago

My group of friends gets something really close to OP, because of our music bot (Which only pings everyone on specific events, like the music queue running out, uncommon enough that it doesn't get annoying, and never more than once a session)

deltaburnt 1y ago

Our friend group's social contract is to sit in a discord channel (even if empty) if you're open to chatting. Unfortunately we have no real equivalent for text.

cronelius 1y ago

might have to put a green dot on a hat or tshirt and try this irl

cgannett 1y ago

well part of it was there wasnt ^{10}10 = 10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10^{10}}}}}}}}} more interesting things than chatting with your friends to do online

godot 1y ago

Would anyone still use a desktop-only (no mobile) messenger where you have to run/turn on intentionally (not always-on like most mobile-first messengers nowadays), lists online/offline friends the way AIM/ICQ did, and you can only send messages with online friends? I get that most leisure computing has moved off of desktop to mobile in modern days, but there's definitely enough of us nerds who're on a computer a lot (even if just for work, if nothing else). It can't be any less than in the late 1990s when ICQ was popular.

jrmg 1y ago
I think it probably is less. I’d hang out on my laptop in the evenings and mornings (like, while watching TV or reading news when eating breakfast) in a way I don’t now. I use my iPad or phone now. I do wonder, though, if there’s a gap for a messenger app that runs only while in the foreground in your phone [edit: or tablet or computer!] - or maybe until you next lock the screen, so you can ‘be online’ only while reading, playing a game, or doomscrolling.

heresie-dabord 1y ago

This might interest you, it was posted on HN early last year: Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496 (I have no association with the post, the people, or the project.)

mkl 1y ago
Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067496

caned 1y ago

I might relate to this, but I also spent more time talking to friends on the phone 20 years ago. The perception of this greatness can't be disentangled from the experience of youth.

vjk800 1y ago

Now that I think about it, that's true. The same of IRC and MSN Messenger. Since being online all the time was not the default state of things, people only turned those applications (or even their computers) on when they actually wanted to chat to other people. When you saw your friend online on one of those, you immediately wrote something to them, even if you didn't really have anything to say, because what was the point of having the application on otherwise?

nuancebydefault 1y ago

I'm open for chitchat and you opened it 9 hours ago

midtake 1y ago

Disagree. There are people open to chitchat right now. They are just young. We just grew old, most of us are having families, and it would be weird to idly chitchat instead of playing your family role.