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. :)
Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roblox is pretty amazing actually.
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.
I need to find a way into that. Thanks for the suggestion.
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#53Oh 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.
IRC is on life support as much as radio is. It's just a retired technology that found a nice niche where it could settle. For Radio it was car radios and IRC is still used but several dev communities.
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#54It'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 anim…
> most movies are formulaic
Huh. I guess you just explained why I'm generally disenchanted by cinema. All I can stand watched is bad or quirky movies because only those satisfy my need for novelty these days.
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Disagree. While that was good, I enjoy browsing Netflix. I wish it had reviews though.
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.
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Disagree. While that was good, I enjoy browsing Netflix. I wish it had reviews though.
Clicking next, next, next one/five titles at a time is my complaint. And even paging doesn’t help much when it’s constantly resorted.
I could semi memorize my local blockbuster and do a walking scan for stuff that was new or caught my eye. They also picked a genre for a movie. Netflix you can see same movie in drama/comedy and thriller. Just makes their catalog look bigger and harder to sort through.
I don’t use Netflix through a touch device. Only on TV via Apple TV or amazon fire so there may be some experience I’m missing out on.
Re: Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree. While that was good, I enjoy browsing Netflix. I wish it had reviews though.
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.
I wouldn't want a discussion with a single teenager about a movie though