This place really is good practice for all sorts of skills: expressive, physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual. And beyond learning about various zones of my beloved nerdtech, there are very subtle levels of sociology, anthropology, and psychology on display here, too.

But yeah, the decline is real, my friend. I declined to use IRC for all these years, and I'm afraid its descendant, texting, has not improved our society's level of anything beyond the most mundane trivial pursuits.