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ICQ will stop working from June 26

icq.com

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Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#391

Post by mike_hock »

101008 wrote: post #290
jmbwell wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being reachable only from a PC at home… man. Now that I miss. The whole lifestyle of having a clear distinction between being at the computer and not. Status messages for a time when “away” was a state of being you ever were . Coming back to see whether your crush had messaged you. Simpler times for sure. Before we even had “wi-fi!”

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing.

You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform.

Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Telegram? You can't talk to anyone anymore unless you submit to one of a few megacorps and run their software.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#393

Post by adamomada »

fabianholzer wrote: post #231

I hope the last message sent on ICQ will be as poetic as the last message on AIM (according to https://justanman.org/posts/the-last-message-sent-on-aim/ )

This reminded me of a random post I think I saw on here about the same thing happening on Club Penguin, I wonder about the last message on there

I had absolutely no connection to the service at all, but the shutdown gave me a weird feeling of loss, perhaps because it was in visual form and the shutdown was recorded on video?

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#394

Post by techas »

Back in the nineties… I set the country of my ICQ account randomly. It was Vanuatu. One day someone contacts me and ask “are you from Vanuatu?”, so I checked and she was from Vanuatu! So I tell her the truth: “I’m not. Are you?” And she answers “No, I’m from Venezuela, I missed my country by one in the config... Later I searched for people on Vanuatu and we two are the only ones“ :)

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#395

Post by mike_hock »

pndy wrote: post #96
debo_ wrote: post #77

All I can say is: "Uh oh!" https://youtu.be/RhGHerssyk4

Somehow I'm having Worms Armageddon flashbacks

Many moons have passed since the worms went to war.

Onwards and upwards! Bigger weapons than before!

Boggy B. took cover, he shivered on patrol.

The arms race: crazy, simply way out of control.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#396

Post by adamomada »

standardUser wrote: post #294

Reminds me of a simpler time when messaging was universal, not a Machiavellian marketing scheme to generate social friction in order to sell more phones.

Are you joking? The only universal messaging was, and still is, email (edit and SMS, I guess)

IRC

ICQ

AIM

MSN Messenger

Y! Messenger

Etc

You not only needed to know the ID but also the service to send it on, which is exactly the same situation today. Except for email

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#397

Post by epolanski »

ta1243 wrote: post #71
epolanski wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

251437659, still remember my number even though I haven't been using ICQ for more than two decades.

Funny how we remember some numbers our entire lives, despite never using them. I can still rattle off my ICQ number, last used nearly 25 years ago, my compuserve ID which I left in 1998, my phone number as a kid, last used about 1994. I also remember various license plates my family had in the mid 90s, but I struggle to remember my own license plate number now. The only two phone numbers I know are mine and my wife's…

I think that the reason why I remember it vividly is because I used it for logging in for years.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#398

Post by mfuzzey »

mike_hock wrote: post #391
101008 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing. You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform. Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Tel…

Telegram has plenty of alternative clients. The others probably don't

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#399

Post by 0xedd »

101008 wrote: post #290
jmbwell wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being reachable only from a PC at home… man. Now that I miss. The whole lifestyle of having a clear distinction between being at the computer and not. Status messages for a time when “away” was a state of being you ever were . Coming back to see whether your crush had messaged you. Simpler times for sure. Before we even had “wi-fi!”

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

Get a dumb phone or a Linux phone. Stop complaining. Be an example.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#400

Post by adamomada »

lvspiff wrote: post #321
oniony wrote: post #315

Man, loved ICQ. I used to text chat to the early hours with this Greek girl I met online. It was platonic but we got quite close and exchange physical letters and actually met up a couple of times. Good times.

I think ive heard this before....did matt damon sing a song about sleeping with your gf so then you took off to find this girl and ended up going on a tour across europe with your best friend and a pair of twins?

shhh, Scottie Doesn’t Know
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