Do you remember IRC?

[m15o]

Before Discord or Slack, there was IRC. It used to be the way to go for group discussions. It's still relatively popular amongst technical users. One of its greatest feature is that it's fully decentralized: anyone can host an IRC network server and have people connect to it.

What's your experience with IRC?

[Nightdrift]

There's a name I haven't heard in a while! Sadly my experience with IRC was very limited, mostly due to personal wariness/preference away from instant messaging. But the ethos of it always seemed super cool, particularly the decentralized aspect, and the very bare-bones plain text aspect, which I assumed allows for a super lean experience.

Speaking from this incredibly limited experience, I still think it is a shame IRC isn't used more over things like Discord/Slack, though I could see the user interface/lack of "fun" being a turn off for some.

The biggest question I was always curious about (and admittedly haven't yet taken the time to research) is the level of security/anonymity possible in IRC.

[Cobra!]

I remember there was an internet radio station I used to listen to that had an IRC chat, and the live shows had hosts interact with them. The station has moved to Discord since, though, and I lost interest in the station.

I also used to use IRC for help with Godot, but then I started using Matrix, which was a lot more active.

[cinni]

i started using retroshare recently (a p2p software), which has an IRC chat :-D a few other folks from the yesterweb discord are on there. otherwise, i havent used IRC in forever, not since the AIM days.. :omg:k:

[j4yc33]

I have more positive than negative memories of IRC. I do remember that it could get *really* bad when it did. I do miss it. I think with the crowd I've met on the yesterweb and the web revival would have made the experience better.

[fLaMEd]

I have more positive than negative memories of IRC. I do remember that it could get *really* bad when it did. I do miss it. I think with the crowd I've met on the yesterweb and the web revival would have made the experience better.

Keen to understand what you mean by IRC getting really bad?

[Kutan]

I loved IRC! I used it for a really long time, initially for a IRC channel for a forum I posted on. Later, I became a part of this weekly IRC meetup, where every Sunday, everyone would pile in to chat while we watched a live puppet show in realplayer (no joke).

I think the only thing I dislike about IRC is the lack of logging-- it was annoying joining a new channel, and being out of the loop for a while because you couldn't read what everyone had been talking about.

Its biggest strength, though, is that absolutely everything can run IRC. I used to connect to IRC on my Dreamcast! And my very first feature phone had IRC on it. So if you're into vintage tech, it's super neat that you can still hop into chat rooms in this way.

[TAS_1K]

For sure, it's been a minute since I've used it since most of the servers I frequented have moved to Discord, but one is still up and has a bridge between Discord and the IRC server.

[fLaMEd]

So IRC was a huge part of my early online life. I end my web memories page with the following

and included a copy of netscape navigator and netscape chat. this opened up a whole new world to me...

Which will lead onto my big IRC story. (make some time to sit down and actually write the page fLaMEd!)

So, back in the day when you installed your ISP from a floppy disk, ours came bundled with Netscape Navigator and Netscape Chat which had the ISPs local IRC server pre-configured. Best part was it wasn't isolated to this ISP, but users from across the country converged.

I got stuck into the various channels and quickly came up to speed with netiquette and interacting with others online.

There was a healthy #teen channel going on and it wasn't long before we started meeting up in real life to trade music and play laser tag etc.

I spent a good few years there and can't exactly what happened but I drifted to other IRC servers following a South Park community, and from there, that's where flamedfury kicked off, and the rest is history that I still have to document

[Kutan]

Man, was everybody online at that time part of a South Park community? I definitely was :omg:k:

That's so cool that your ISP gave you a way to find some local people! I still think the idea of local chat rooms is great-- though Telegram tried that (GPS enabled) but it just got demolished by bots :'(

[fLaMEd]

The only bots back then were Eggdrops and they were helpful

Yeah I was in there with the #sweeet crew if you remember Juz and his 3d South Park wallpapers!

[virtue]

Honestly I still use IRC quite frequently! The good hangouts are definitely really hard to spot at this point, but I personally like to spend time hanging out in ## on libera. The folks there are... well, they can definitely be very rude at time, but usually only in a relatively playful way. I have had a lot of fun hanging around there, would recommend if you can tolerate a little verbal roughhousing.