
Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s - jaequery
I recall the days when IRCs and even AOL chatrooms were all the rage. Back then, I was able to join and chat with a group of people for almost any topics, be it, #nba, #movies, #math, #sql, etc ... you name it. There were always people, helpful ones too.<p>And now, the only thing that comes closest in chatting is Reddit&#x2F;Twitter. It is more of a QA forum though and not really real-time.<p>Oh the good ol&#x27; days, anyone here miss them too?
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PerfectElement
In 20 years, today's teenagers will be talking about "the good days when
Twitter and Instagram were all the rage". I think that part of what you miss
is the feeling of being young, with an open road ahead of you, fewer
responsibilities, and hormones in full force, making life seem much more
colorful.

~~~
iforgotpassword
This. I still recall this exciting feeling of realizing how I'm chatting in
real-time with dozens of people from all over the country. Also how edonkey
and then emule were all the rage. Downloading all the music and movies, no
worries about copyright, vbulletin boards where you'd discuss how to tweak
your emule to reach a few KB/s more. Waiting days until the camrip of the
latest movie finally finished - blue screen, file gone, start over, burn rsvcd
which is way better than mvcd. No divx because the DVD player can't handle it.

Yeah I think I actually prefer the Netflix experience.

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bronlund
Guys! IRC is still there! Usenet is still there! The reason it's not the same
is that all you guys left.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> The reason it's not the same is that all you guys left.

+1.

Usenet is still there, and a few groups are still being used for academic
discussions. But many other groups have almost no "legitimate" users anymore,
and have been filled with spam messages.

But the real show stopper today is that, since a community does not exist in
these groups anymore, one or two crazy people can completely control and
dominate a group. Recently I tried to explore the present day Usenet, and I
found a conspiracy theorist can keep yelling at everyone in a historically
reputable infosec newsgroup. Or you can have two college professors debating
about creationism in a boring way for half a month. My conclusion is, Usenet
still has some good uses, but is generally worthless today for most
discussions.

~~~
lazyjones
> _The reason it 's not the same is that all you guys left._

I was on IRC since the time EFnet had about 2000 users during the day (1993 or
so). I left when it had turned into this:

> _one or two crazy people can completely control and dominate a group._

op-wars, annoying admins abusing their own, often academic servers, is what
destroyed IRC for me. Reddit is the same for groups where various
political/ideological views collide, only same-interest groups are worthwhile.

MMOGs possibly made IRC unattractive for many people too...

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mindcrime
_Oh the good ol ' days, anyone here miss them too?_

I definitely feel some nostalgia for certain aspects of the "internet, circa
1997".

But do consider that IRC is still alive, as well as many other kinds of "chat
rooms" today. There are still XMPP based chat services, and you have things
like Slack, Gitter, Mastodon, Riot, etc., etc. And heck, if you look hard
enough you can still find BBS's up and running, many accessible via Telnet. I
wouldn't be half surprised to find some Fidonet stuff still going on
somewhere.

~~~
jaequery
Yes, IRC is still alive (mainly Freenode), albeit on life support, lol. As for
other services, the problem is that it's become (or becoming) scattered
(Slack, Riot, etc). AOL as much as ridiculous it was, it was fun, because
pretty much everyone was gathered in one place.

~~~
avian
Freenode hosts only free software-related channels as far as I know. There are
still some small servers out there, but they are getting rarer. One I used to
frequent just recently shut down because it was hit by massive amounts of
disgusting spam.

[https://freenode.net/news/spam-shake](https://freenode.net/news/spam-shake)

~~~
vertex-four
Freenode hosts a ridiculous amount of social channels, albeit usually for
niche purposes or centred around specific people.

The spam has been stopped recently, at least where I’m hanging out.

~~~
avian
I'm glad that the spam has stopped, but the damage to smaller servers has been
done. After months of having channels constantly flooded with revolting stuff
I doubt people are coming back, even if admins find the energy to put servers
back online.

------
dharma1
Yes, IRC in the 90s was amazing. I think Reddit captures some of that, Twitter
not so much.

Matrix/Riot is cool (the redesign just launched -
[https://riot.im/app](https://riot.im/app) ) and has the same concept as IRC
of a universe of chat rooms you can just join (Vs separated workspaces like
Slack).

Discord too, though perhaps more tech/gaming audiences than the wider mix of
IRC in the 90s, and again the topic specific servers are disconnected from
each other

~~~
hestefisk
I have just created a Matrix room for us to chat in. Just open
[https://matrix.to/#/#hackernews:matrix.jensenwaud.com](https://matrix.to/#/#hackernews:matrix.jensenwaud.com)

------
znpy
My feeling is that the whole internet was somehow better back in the day.

On most platform, you just needed your nickname of choice and an email
address, and you were good to go. If something didn't go well, you could just
come up with another username (and maybe another email address) and start
anew.

~~~
jsilence
Also in the good old internet it was a crowd of early adopters discovering and
enjoying something new. Nowadays everbody is on and the systems people get on
first are intentionally designed to foster toxic behaviour.

~~~
LifeLiverTransp
Its like that one toxic flat-house whereeverybody is in constant row with
everybody, as a replacement for valueable social interaction. Seems lonely
people are rather in a fight, then truely confined to social isolation.

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brianpgordon
> And now, the only thing that comes closest in chatting is Reddit/Twitter. It
> is more of a QA forum though and not really real-time.

You're looking for Discord. Find an open server on one of the index sites or
ask your friends if they can invite you to ones they hang out in.

------
cotelletta
It's going to sound elitist but it's kinda obvious: the old internet was
predominantly youngish STEM academics and tech professionals. I.e. smart
people. It also created a lot of tribal alignment which meant that serious
moral and ethical conflict was rare.

That said, we also grew up, and now I'm sure a lot of those conversations
would seem as inane as the average Discord shitpost. Which, tbh, is
terrible... The anime superstimulus girls are grotesque in their exaggerated
neoteny, the memes are artless cos the baseline is now what you can glue
together on a phone, and the background murmur is gossip pulled in from social
media, like a hen party on coke.

I have managed to meet enough interesting people over the years that I can
still sustain interest even at age 35, but it's tough. Most people my age are
too busy tending their kids, which has permanently distracted them from
hanging out, and has turned many into insufferably bland soccer moms.

For the remaining participants it also takes some serious commitment to
actually engage in good faith and not let calcified attitudes trump it, for
the topics you wanna talk about at middle age. Cos it turns out there's a
pretty big difference between saying you're tolerant and open minded among a
group of samey youngsters who know jack, and actually being those two things.

That said, at middle age you also just know better what you want. No amount of
discussion will convince me sportsball is for me... Most movies are formulaic
and predictable because that's what the masses respond to... Math and science
is hard and it's taught entirely wrong but the people who can fix it have
better things to do than be teachers... SQL is kinda shit and mainly serves as
job security for the data priests and constabularies.

(But hey, I'm @geodesic#8759 on discord, hmu if you're interesting)

~~~
Top5a
>It's going to sound elitist

I do not believe prefacing your argument with a hedge in this manner is
necessary :) Barrier to entry and positive attractors, including, in the case
of the early web, academic mindset, for early technological adopters are real
phenomena. cf. Eternal September

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watmough
My 8 year likes to chat in Roblox. Lots of the games are sort of a surrogate
open world / chatroom type deal.

It seems close enough to the same thing, but for today's older kids, I'd have
to imagine they are all on Facebook or whatever social network is current.

~~~
chasd00
Roblox is pretty amazing actually.

~~~
ausbah
Roblox is really amazing actually, as someone who played it in middle school
6+ years ago - seeing the game still going strong while (seemingly) keeping
most of the core "game" intact is amazing.

It is not flashy, but it was the way me and many other kids were introduced to
programming through building games involving Lua and their in game GUI.

~~~
watmough
I need to find a way into that. Thanks for the suggestion.

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Spooky23
You just need to look for scoped communities. As big as AOL seemed to be, you
didn’t potentially have billions of people.

Engaging people on Twitter in any kind of serious discussion is like doing it
in meatspce Times Square. You’ll find reasonable people, but it can quickly
shift to crazy or even dangerous.

That’s the downside of the public square.

------
mhd
I miss IRC, too, but that's mostly missing the time and inclination to spend
my evenings on #linuxger, not as much the tech itself.

For practical purposes, I miss Usenet more. Topic-oriented discussion, my
choice of client. Instead I'm forced into proprietary opinion graveyards.
(Like, well, here)

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icedchai
Yes, I miss that time. Mid 90s internet was fun!

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KozmoNau7
Good old nostalgia. I miss IRC, simple hand-written HTML websites and forums.
Now everything seems to run through Facebook or one of their peers, with
little to no room for custom touches and design, everyone just paints within
the lines.

I also kind of miss the days of movies on VHS, physically going and renting
movies, music on CDs, not having millions of media choices accessible within
seconds.

Though I have to say, I tried reliving the CD experience a little while ago. I
dug out my CD collection and bought a second hand CD player. It just wasn't
the same anymore. The magic wasn't there.

Some things are best left to nostalgic thoughts.

~~~
conductr
Browsing and discovery within a blockbuster store was far superior to what any
of the steaming apps have given us. I absolutely loathe the process of trying
to find something to watch these days

~~~
1ste
Disagree. While that was good, I enjoy browsing Netflix. I wish it had reviews
though.

~~~
justtopost
Thats the thing, as a teen, I worked at blockbuster and by 6months had watched
everything in the store. I would have deep conversations with customers and
help them find things based on their tastes, many of whom I got to know. Now
you have an algo. Its not better, for exactly the reason you stated.

~~~
1ste
I wouldn't want a discussion with a single teenager about a movie though

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karpour
I missed them for a long time, but I found that there are lots of groups on
Telegram (I know there are lots on Discord as well but I don't like the
bloated UI too much) Telegram is at least semi-open and there are IRC gateways
as well. I would prefer if it was easier to just drop in and out of channels
like in IRC, but at least there are many of places to discuss special
interests and meet people again!

~~~
Macha
Given some people commenting how they liked the screen names and anonymity of
irc, it's hard to see telegram being a replacement with its requirement for a
phone number identifier

~~~
TomMarius
The phone number stays private

~~~
Macha
Don't you add people by phone number? i.e. username -> phone number lookup is
not possible but phone number -> username is?

~~~
faissaloo
No, you can give yourself an @ so people can find you.

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norin
I too miss my IRC days. I met many cool people on there. One introduced me to
Blink182 and the other became a good friend whom I have known for almost 20
years. Some of the stuff I know today I do because of my interactions with
those I met on IRC. Time has truly flown by. The signs of grey are visible in
my hair and what one might not even call a beared. :)

------
staticautomatic
I miss booting the shit out anyone I didn't like with the cunning use of
pr0gz. Man what a power trip that was for a middle school boy.

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ibash
How old were you in the 90s? I’d like to know how much is nostalgia for that
particular age.

~~~
jaequery
I was around 14 - 18

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thetricia
I see a lot of youngsters use Discord sort of in the way IRC would be back in
the day. I'm guessing though, as quite frankly it was never something I liked.
Didn't like IRC and don't like the ones today either.

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billfruit
What I cherish most is the nm never ending trivia game rooms, with real people
from all across the world. The very civil manner in which people were
participating is a fond memory.

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thisone
can't say I miss A/S/L every conversation and people trying to get kids (aka
me) into private chat rooms.

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SmushyTaco
You could always make a new platform for chatrooms like back in the day but
with modern technologies.

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saurik
There are simply too many people all using the same system for that style of
interaction to scale :(.

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NicoJuicy
IRC and freenode isn't dead

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AznHisoka
I miss the “uh-oh” that that ftp program (and icq) made when an upload failed.

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villgax
Discord bro

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hestefisk
Yes I miss it too.

