I recall many years ago, there were 'Chat Rooms'

[TlalocW]

5. I remember the good old days of IRC

Internet came to my college campus in the early 90s. Some of my like-minded nerd friends and I liked to join the #limbaugh channel and get into arguments... with a twist as we joined with the names HulkHogan and MachoMan and would argue in character. I remember the longest ban from the channel we ever got was when one of us typed in the action: MachoMan grabs GunHed (channel moderator) and bodyslams him straight to hell so he can sit and visit with Richard Nixon.

Another time in a #politics channel, I was able to run off the grandson of Fred Phelps who had been on the channel calling everyone fags and fag-lovers. I said something like, "It's proven that lesbians are one of the groups least effected by AIDS. By your logic that God is punishing groups of people with AIDS, it's apparent that He really loves lesbians... which proves that God is a man after all."

And finally, I would join a #seattle channel to talk with a friend from there through private messages because we had this act where I was a bot she had programmed. So I would type out the lyrics to Gilligan's Island but not enter them in the public chat until I messaged her to type, "Gilligan!" at which point I would hit enter to make it look like I auto-responded. It drove one person on there crazy because my friend told him that if you paid attention, you could figure out how to control me.

Ah, such fun, wasted time. Nowadays, if I need background noise, I go to a site that plays MST3K nearly 24/7. There's a little chatbox next to it that I'll sometimes interact with people in it because sometimes the moderator plays a horrible non-MST3K movie, and we'll riff it.

TlalocW