Why Real Life is better than IRC (2000)

I was on IRC really early, 91, and it was great, there wasn't that many people on there and it felt way more international and you naturally ended up talking to people from all around the world (I'm from NZ). I even did two overseas trips to meet all kinds of people in real life and experiencing all kinds of slices of other peoples worlds. As more and more people got on the internet people ended up talking much more with locals (except for special interest groups). I'm still in contact with one of the very first friends I made on IRC (who is in the US) and have met them multiple times over the years

As the last generation that remembers what life was like before the internet, we need to ask ourselves - is the world we built better than the one we were born into? The older I get, the less convinced I am. It's not just nostalgia, as affirmed by Gen Zs rejection of the digital world.

I can't believe everything2 still exists!

Ah damn this brings back memories… shout out if you were on #windows98, #windows2000 or #windowsxp on EFnet circa 97-01.

First of all

Everything2 is still around? whoooa, totally forgot about that. Gotta definitely get back into that. That seems like one of those great anti-modern-social-media ideas that the kids might like to learn about.

Really... not sure I can agree with any of this.

>If you do phone a friend at 4am to say "I'm down" they take it seriously.

Well, I mean I've never had friends so I can't really say too much about that. But I never really had anyone in my life that would do that so... eh?

> In RL, you can be alone on purpose without seeming antisocial.

>People try to get you to stay "just a little longer" and make you feel wanted.

No one's ever done that for me. Quite the opposite actually. I'm rather repulsive in real life so most people would prefer me away in real life.

> A hug is always nice, but a real, close, body-touching real life hug is … nicer :)

Is it? The two times I've been hugged in my life have been more just uncomfortable.

> You can know for sure that people who are being nice to your face aren't simultaneously bitching behind your back

... my father was praised as being a good man. He was also the same man that grabbed by my hair and violently introduced my face to the kitchen floor. Broke my nose and lip, then made me clean the blood up with my tongue as apology to him for forcing him to hit me. He's flung coins into my face hard enough to cut the skin. Broken coffee mugs over my head.

I don't blame him for doing what he did; I was difficult as a child. But it never really made any sense to me why his peers would praise him for being good when there was so much controversy over just spanking a child vs what happened to me when it seemed perfectly normal to me to get hit with a stick hard enough to bruise for a month afterwards.

Always made me wonder what else someone would hide from strangers.

> You can hear the warmth in the voice that says 'I love you' and see the look in the person's eyes

... This is something I've kind of wanted to rant about for a while. But no. I don't want love in my life. 25 years of my life were spent receiving bruises, cuts, and humiliation because my parents loved me. And I spent 25 years enduring it in silence because I loved them. Because that's what you're supposed to do when you love someone.

They're gone now. And I've had more then enough love in my life to say that I want no part of it anymore.

No, I think the quiet of an IRC screen is quite a quite a bit more preferable to outside.

This is why I resolved to meet my now-wife in person, some 20 years after we first met on IRC.