Where Have All The Chat Rooms Gone?

Where Have All The Chat Rooms Gone?

That’s a good question Paula. Back in the early 90’s I chatted on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). You had to dial them up directly with a modem and usually only had a hand full of lines. They were also only local. It was still a blast and I met some really good friends that I still have today through them. I also met my second wife on a BBS, whom (did I use that right?) I don’t still have today, thankfully.

When the internet came along I discovered Internet Relay Chat (IRC) where you could chat with thousand of different people all over the world. It was set up with different servers and all kinds of topics for different chat rooms. That’s where I met my third (and current) wife, thankfully. I lured her all the way from Canada with my charming wiles. Or more than likely I just got damn lucky.

These days I’ve noticed that the chat rooms aren’t that big of a thing anymore. It’s like we went from pre-computer days to only socializing with a close circle of known friends, to having contact with people all over the world, then back to only facebooking, twittering, or instagramming another close circle of friends. And it’s not really chatting. It’s just dropping a message or two every now and then to someone’s post or picture.

I kind of miss the old days of chat rooms. They say you can’t go home again and to that I raise the BS flag.

Since I’ve been in the blogosphere I’ve gotten to know quite a few other bloggers through the comments we leave on each other’s blogs. I thought it might be a nice touch to have the option to live chat with each other. I installed a chat room feature on my blog. You can access it a couple of ways. There is a new item at the top in the menu labeled Let’s Chat! or there is a little chat icon at the bottom left of every page of the blog. That will bring up a chat window. You can go into the chat room as a guest or you can sign up for a free profile at Minnit to create a profile that will be used every time you go in the chat room. You can also use the menu at the bottom to pop the chat room out into it’s own window so you don’t have to stay on the blog to use it.

If this sounds something you’d like to try I’d love to chat with all you cool cats. I work from home now so I plan on having the chat window up during the day. Around 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM EST. Drop by and say hello. Also I don’t have to be here for you to chat with others. Feel free to come and go all hours of the day and night. I hope you do!

I’d also like to give a shout out to Rivergirl for helping me test the chat functions out before I went live. She’s good people. Check out her blog if you haven’t already.

OK, what are you waiting for? Come chat me up!

Share this shit y'all!

19 thoughts on “Where Have All The Chat Rooms Gone?

  1. This is so cool. I’m up for chatting. Admittedly I never was much of a chatterer back when IRC was a thing. My home computer at the time was a bit behind the times and I had a fairly busy schedule, and the charges on the dial-up added up.
    Funny enough I remember when BBSes had a chat function, but you could only chat with the Sysop, and only when they were available. I made a point of chatting at least once with every Sysop of every board where I was a regular.
    Anyway…yeah, on to the chats.
    Christopher recently posted…Don’t Be Mine.My Profile

    1. You should give it a shot. You might be surprised. I have all kinds of difficulty speaking to people face to face but find chatting online to be much easier and enjoyable.

  2. I never spent a great deal of time in those chat rooms, but I loved the message boards back in the day. Spent way too many work days on those. 😉

    Modern social media, with it’s quick hits and short dialogues suits me well, most of the time. I do get my extended discussion board fix here in the blogosphere. 👍🏼 All that said, Ari, I’ll pop in to chat with you sometime!

    1. Bad timing. The Coronavirus has screwed up even my chat room. Hopefully will get it running smoothly again and I doubt you could ever be lame.

    1. I bet you’ll also provide me with a guide to entering my credit card info too. Man, my spam filter has developed a few holes lately.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge