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Show HN: An interactive story about living on IRC in the '90s
Hi, HN. Long time lurker, first time poster.
I'm a long time software engineer, and I started getting really into computers and the internet as a kid in the late 80s and early 90s. I started using IRC and Linux and just fell in love with everything about it.
Before 2000 I stopped 'hacking' for several years because I thought I needed to get a real-world life and that only nerds were online. But ironically in the time that I was out of the game, online social networks became "cool" somehow, and every person on the planet developed an online persona.
Anyhoo, I created a story about my experiences online (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/146026/eye-are-see https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/146026/eye-are-see). As I was writing it I kept feeling like man, it would be really awesome to experience this again, so I developed (yes, with AI) a browser-based interactive experience that allows readers to play through the journey.
If you were ever on IRC (e.g., DALNet, EFNet, Undernet, etc) or if you're just curious about out what it was like, check it out. That part of my life was so transformative and so special, and hopefully I can share a little bit of that joy with other folks.
- granganath 2mo agoSuper cool design, I went through the first "chapter" and thought it was great
- sascotto 2mo agoThanks. It's a full novella. So I realize reading it would take a long time. That being said, in the interest of enabling people to check out some of the other designs (e.g., bitchx), you can use this URL param to unlock all the chapters - UNLOCK_ALL=1
- tmshapland 2mo agoOh man, this brought out so much techno nostaligia in me! Winamp! Chat rooms with actual users before every one just assumed it was a bot and the internet became a garbage fire of self promotion.