Do you remember IRC?

[neongod]

I grew up on IRC and I found a community and real life friends there who I'm still in contact with 20 years later. I stopped using it when most people disappeared with the rise of IMs, then the social media, but recently I returned. Now it's different of course, but surprisingly people are still using it. It's much less crowded and maybe with all the noise online, it's a good thing.

My main issue was that I couldn't make it fit into my daily routine. That you're only 'there', when you're connected and if you turn your computer off or it goes to sleep, you get disconnected. Then I bought a RaspberryPi (for other reasons) and found that there is an IRC client called The Lounge. It runs locally and provides a nice web IRC interface you can use both from your computer or your phone. As my RaspberryPi is always on, I stay connected on IRC even if my laptop or phone is off, and I can read back the chat history or reply to people whenever I have time. It's perfect.

[xXWebMasterXx_Gina]

While I never had any real experience with IRC, it is something I'd like to learn more about! These kinds of things are fascinating to me, and more practically; as the modern web becomes more inhospitable, looking back on how things were done in the early days of the internet is invaluable! There's also maybe the cool factor too  >_<

Without even knowing, Clonk and Worms, two games with lots of similarities, have a built-in IRC Client for organizing games.

Speaking of cool factor; the (Hollywood esque) hacking simulator game, Uplink, also included an IRC client in the form of an optional upgrade! I think it was primarily meant to serve as an in-game way to ask for advice from other hackers (players) but you could also just connect to any other IRC channel.

[SilentHope33]

I remember using it as a kid, and talking about video games, comics/manga, anime, and tv shows. I don't remember a lot of stuff about IRC from my days as a teen, in the late 90's/00's but I do remember making friends and having them added on instant messenger. So there's that, but now thinking on that stuff it wouldn't hurt to go back to that stuff as the net has become toxic with hostile politics and such...

[BagelCake]

remember irc? i'm still using irc and that's actually how i found out about melonland lol
good memories hanging out in irc rooms on and off through the years

[virtue]

I actually did use IRC for a bit with the free trial of mIRC, and i remember messaging the linux chat about methods to install linux, and they suggested i make a boot disk. There are a lot of servers to choose from as well

I found this one specific support channel and everyone in there was the biggest asshole ever so everyone just got support in the general chat someone else made for the project. Lol, Lmao, Rofl even

[Misanthropic Monster™]

I believe IRC was the first chat programme I ever used back in the '90s!