Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#11

Post by avian »

jaequery wrote: post #6
mindcrime wrote: post #3

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 access…

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.

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

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#12

Post by 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 ) 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

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#14

Post by 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.

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#15

Post by 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)

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#16

Post by 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.

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#17

Post by jsilence »

znpy wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#18

Post by hestefisk »

avian wrote: post #11
jaequery wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

EFnet is still alive.
Post reply on HN