8 ms·

Why Real Life is better than IRC (2000)

68 points by themaxdavitt 9mo ago

Also: Why IRC is better than Real Life – https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20Real%20Life%20is%20better%20than%20IRC https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20Real%20Life%20is%2...

bitwize 9mo ago
This is why I resolved to meet my now-wife in person, some 20 years after we first met on IRC.
emtel 9mo ago
I can't believe everything2 still exists!
- NoWayDude1 9mo ago
  That was my first reaction without even reading. 27 years and still running!
keithnz 9mo ago
I was on IRC really early, 91, and it was great, there wasn't that many people on there and it felt way more international and you naturally ended up talking to people from all around the world (I'm from NZ). I even did two overseas trips to meet all kinds of people in real life and experiencing all kinds of slices of other peoples worlds. As more and more people got on the internet people ended up talking much more with locals (except for special interest groups). I'm still in contact with one of the very first friends I made on IRC (who is in the US) and have met them multiple times over the years
- kankerlijer 9mo ago
  Same. I randomly had time off and someone in IRC noticed. I traveled from the US to Germany to hang out with them. Their brother was involved in BMW racing, and we hung out at Stuttgart for a few weekends in a trailer. Some of the best weeks of my life.
- alexchantavy 9mo ago
  I didn't do IRC until early 2000s but I felt a lot of curiosity about being online with other people: were they from an opposite corner of the world? What was life like there? How interesting that we can talk to each other! Just the act of getting online to seek out others was super niche, so I feel like it was a bit of a "finding your own tribe" experience for me.
- paulmooreparks 9mo ago
  You didn't happen to hang out on #C++, did you?
crims0n 9mo ago
As the last generation that remembers what life was like before the internet, we need to ask ourselves - is the world we built better than the one we were born into? The older I get, the less convinced I am. It's not just nostalgia, as affirmed by Gen Zs rejection of the digital world.
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  I don't think this is a very difficult question to answer. The internet of the year 2000 made the world a better place. The internet of the year 2025 makes the world a much, much worse place. We now live in an era where not only governments but every private business willing to pay a data broker has access to unlimited data for roughly every individual in a population, including their age, gender, occupation, hobbies, friends, political positions, sleep schedule, every phone call they've ever made, every website they've ever visited, every location they've ever taken their phone, every thing they've ever purchased. This information is currently used to shape the course of politics by manipulating what every individual sees, and will undoubtedly be used for unthinkable crimes against humanity in the coming years.
  - quietsegfault 9mo ago
    I'm not sure that's the /internet/'s fault, but the humanities inability to anticipate what we can do with the technology and our inability to regulate the technology to prevent harms.
    - georgemcbay 9mo ago
      > humanities inability to anticipate what we can do with the technology I think it is more a problem of not caring (especially when not caring will result in social and/or economic reward) rather than not anticipating. For any technology that is created you can and should anticipate that it will be, literally, weaponized since there are hundreds of thousands of years of precedent for this happening.
    - immibis 9mo ago
jrm4 9mo ago
First of all Everything2 is still around? whoooa, totally forgot about that. Gotta definitely get back into that. That seems like one of those great anti-modern-social-media ideas that the kids might like to learn about.
aforty 9mo ago
Ah damn this brings back memories… shout out if you were on #windows98, #windows2000 or #windowsxp on EFnet circa 97-01.
- corykrug 9mo ago
  or #winxp but I could be thinking of DALnet...
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
noneparticular 9mo ago
Really... not sure I can agree with any of this. >If you do phone a friend at 4am to say "I'm down" they take it seriously. Well, I mean I've never had friends so I can't really say too much about that. But I never really had anyone in my life that would do that so... eh? > In RL, you can be alone on purpose without seeming antisocial. >People try to get you to stay "just a little longer" and make you feel wanted. No one's ever done that for me. Quite the opposite actually. I'm rather repulsive in real life so most people would prefer me away in real life. > A hug is always nice, but a real, close, body-touching real life hug is … nicer :) Is it? The two times I've been hugged in my life have been more just uncomfortable. > You can know for sure that people who are being nice to your face aren't simultaneously bitching behind your back ... my father was praised as being a good man. He was also the same man that grabbed by my hair and violently introduced my face to the kitchen floor. Broke my nose and lip, then made me clean the blood up with my tongue as apology to him for forcing him to hit me. He's flung coins into my face hard enough to cut the skin. Broken coffee mugs over my head. I don't blame him for doing what he did; I was difficult as a child. But it never really made any sense to me why his peers would praise him for being good when there was so much controversy over just spanking a child vs what happened to me when it seemed perfectly normal to me to get hit with a stick hard enough to bruise for a month afterwards. Always made me wonder what else someone would hide from strangers. > You can hear the warmth in the voice that says 'I love you' and see the look in the person's eyes ... This is something I've kind of wanted to rant about for a while. But no. I don't want love in my life. 25 years of my life were spent receiving bruises, cuts, and humiliation because my parents loved me. And I spent 25 years enduring it in silence because I loved them. Because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone. They're gone now. And I've had more then enough love in my life to say that I want no part of it anymore. No, I think the quiet of an IRC screen is quite a quite a bit more preferable to outside.
- yakkomajuri 9mo ago
  Hey, I'm sorry you had to go through everything you've described here. I've never had to go through anything remotely similar. I'd just want to point out what you've experienced is not love. There may have been some form of love from those people towards you, but the things you've described are not manifestations of that love, they're manifestations of something else. I hope you can believe me. Sorry if I'm intruding. My email is on my bio if you ever want to chat in a non-public setting.
nyrikki 9mo ago
The old efnet #unix sex chart debunks some of these claims. I know I learned more from having ops in #unixhelp than stack overflow. But the 90s were different, and it really depended on the channels. I remember going into #nanog to finally get uunet to pull bgp routes once. Sure there were bad parts, but at least you still had agency unlike with modern social media.
nntwozz 9mo ago
Microsoft Comic Chat was the gateway drug that got me into IRC as a kid, only later did I realize it was IRC and I switched to mIRC.
- tombert 9mo ago
  Similar for me, though I used the one built into eMule, which I used for my LINUX ISOS.
ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
Related: Why IRC is better than Real Life (2000) https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20IRC%20is%20better%20than%20Real%20Life https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20IRC%20is%20better%... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611119)
xg15 9mo ago
> You can get dressed up all special, and people notice Not in IRC, but I'm pretty sure avatar choice has a nontrivial effect how someone is perceived online (at least as long as you don't know anything else about them - like in real life)
anthk 9mo ago
I've seen better people in IRC than the 90% of my neighbourhood in Spain which most of its leisure time it's being spent in bars, taverns and the like.

68 points by themaxdavitt 9mo ago

Also: Why IRC is better than Real Life – https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20Real%20Life%20is%20better%20than%20IRC https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20Real%20Life%20is%2...

bitwize 9mo ago

This is why I resolved to meet my now-wife in person, some 20 years after we first met on IRC.

emtel 9mo ago

I can't believe everything2 still exists!

NoWayDude1 9mo ago
That was my first reaction without even reading. 27 years and still running!

keithnz 9mo ago

I was on IRC really early, 91, and it was great, there wasn't that many people on there and it felt way more international and you naturally ended up talking to people from all around the world (I'm from NZ). I even did two overseas trips to meet all kinds of people in real life and experiencing all kinds of slices of other peoples worlds. As more and more people got on the internet people ended up talking much more with locals (except for special interest groups). I'm still in contact with one of the very first friends I made on IRC (who is in the US) and have met them multiple times over the years

kankerlijer 9mo ago
Same. I randomly had time off and someone in IRC noticed. I traveled from the US to Germany to hang out with them. Their brother was involved in BMW racing, and we hung out at Stuttgart for a few weekends in a trailer. Some of the best weeks of my life.
alexchantavy 9mo ago
I didn't do IRC until early 2000s but I felt a lot of curiosity about being online with other people: were they from an opposite corner of the world? What was life like there? How interesting that we can talk to each other! Just the act of getting online to seek out others was super niche, so I feel like it was a bit of a "finding your own tribe" experience for me.
paulmooreparks 9mo ago
You didn't happen to hang out on #C++, did you?

crims0n 9mo ago

As the last generation that remembers what life was like before the internet, we need to ask ourselves - is the world we built better than the one we were born into? The older I get, the less convinced I am. It's not just nostalgia, as affirmed by Gen Zs rejection of the digital world.

anonymous908213 9mo ago
I don't think this is a very difficult question to answer. The internet of the year 2000 made the world a better place. The internet of the year 2025 makes the world a much, much worse place. We now live in an era where not only governments but every private business willing to pay a data broker has access to unlimited data for roughly every individual in a population, including their age, gender, occupation, hobbies, friends, political positions, sleep schedule, every phone call they've ever made, every website they've ever visited, every location they've ever taken their phone, every thing they've ever purchased. This information is currently used to shape the course of politics by manipulating what every individual sees, and will undoubtedly be used for unthinkable crimes against humanity in the coming years.
- quietsegfault 9mo ago
  I'm not sure that's the /internet/'s fault, but the humanities inability to anticipate what we can do with the technology and our inability to regulate the technology to prevent harms.
  - georgemcbay 9mo ago
    > humanities inability to anticipate what we can do with the technology I think it is more a problem of not caring (especially when not caring will result in social and/or economic reward) rather than not anticipating. For any technology that is created you can and should anticipate that it will be, literally, weaponized since there are hundreds of thousands of years of precedent for this happening.
  - immibis 9mo ago

jrm4 9mo ago

First of all Everything2 is still around? whoooa, totally forgot about that. Gotta definitely get back into that. That seems like one of those great anti-modern-social-media ideas that the kids might like to learn about.

aforty 9mo ago

Ah damn this brings back memories… shout out if you were on #windows98, #windows2000 or #windowsxp on EFnet circa 97-01.

corykrug 9mo ago
or #winxp but I could be thinking of DALnet...
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

noneparticular 9mo ago

Really... not sure I can agree with any of this. >If you do phone a friend at 4am to say "I'm down" they take it seriously. Well, I mean I've never had friends so I can't really say too much about that. But I never really had anyone in my life that would do that so... eh? > In RL, you can be alone on purpose without seeming antisocial. >People try to get you to stay "just a little longer" and make you feel wanted. No one's ever done that for me. Quite the opposite actually. I'm rather repulsive in real life so most people would prefer me away in real life. > A hug is always nice, but a real, close, body-touching real life hug is … nicer :) Is it? The two times I've been hugged in my life have been more just uncomfortable. > You can know for sure that people who are being nice to your face aren't simultaneously bitching behind your back ... my father was praised as being a good man. He was also the same man that grabbed by my hair and violently introduced my face to the kitchen floor. Broke my nose and lip, then made me clean the blood up with my tongue as apology to him for forcing him to hit me. He's flung coins into my face hard enough to cut the skin. Broken coffee mugs over my head. I don't blame him for doing what he did; I was difficult as a child. But it never really made any sense to me why his peers would praise him for being good when there was so much controversy over just spanking a child vs what happened to me when it seemed perfectly normal to me to get hit with a stick hard enough to bruise for a month afterwards. Always made me wonder what else someone would hide from strangers. > You can hear the warmth in the voice that says 'I love you' and see the look in the person's eyes ... This is something I've kind of wanted to rant about for a while. But no. I don't want love in my life. 25 years of my life were spent receiving bruises, cuts, and humiliation because my parents loved me. And I spent 25 years enduring it in silence because I loved them. Because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone. They're gone now. And I've had more then enough love in my life to say that I want no part of it anymore. No, I think the quiet of an IRC screen is quite a quite a bit more preferable to outside.

yakkomajuri 9mo ago
Hey, I'm sorry you had to go through everything you've described here. I've never had to go through anything remotely similar. I'd just want to point out what you've experienced is not love. There may have been some form of love from those people towards you, but the things you've described are not manifestations of that love, they're manifestations of something else. I hope you can believe me. Sorry if I'm intruding. My email is on my bio if you ever want to chat in a non-public setting.

nyrikki 9mo ago

The old efnet #unix sex chart debunks some of these claims. I know I learned more from having ops in #unixhelp than stack overflow. But the 90s were different, and it really depended on the channels. I remember going into #nanog to finally get uunet to pull bgp routes once. Sure there were bad parts, but at least you still had agency unlike with modern social media.

nntwozz 9mo ago

Microsoft Comic Chat was the gateway drug that got me into IRC as a kid, only later did I realize it was IRC and I switched to mIRC.

tombert 9mo ago
Similar for me, though I used the one built into eMule, which I used for my LINUX ISOS.

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

Related: Why IRC is better than Real Life (2000) https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20IRC%20is%20better%20than%20Real%20Life https://everything2.com/node/e2node/Why%20IRC%20is%20better%... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611119)

xg15 9mo ago

> You can get dressed up all special, and people notice Not in IRC, but I'm pretty sure avatar choice has a nontrivial effect how someone is perceived online (at least as long as you don't know anything else about them - like in real life)

anthk 9mo ago

I've seen better people in IRC than the 90% of my neighbourhood in Spain which most of its leisure time it's being spent in bars, taverns and the like.