Tell HN: I miss the chatrooms of the 90s

#1

Post by jaequery » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

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.

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.

Oh the good ol' days, anyone here miss them too?

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

#2

Post by ibash » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 4:46 AM UTC

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

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

#3

Post by mindcrime » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

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.

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

#4

Post by jaequery » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

ibash wrote: post #2

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

I was around 14 - 18

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

#5

Post by icedchai » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:22 AM UTC

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

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

#6

Post by jaequery » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

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.

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

#7

Post by thetricia » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

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.

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

#8

Post by saurik » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

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

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

#9

Post by staticautomatic » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC

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.

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

#10

Post by watmough » Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

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.