Back in the days of the IRC

I started to use IRC back in -94. Thinking about this whole cyberspace-trip we've all done, coming from these chat-rooms full of curiosity for the new world, this hidden world, as most people didn't have a clue what we were doing there. I was talking to my irl friends about how great way it was, to meet new people all over the planet, and when I went to IT-school, I tried to incorporate it into my final "paper" but it was not understood. We had that language with pings and servers and all the stuff we just knew and learned without thinking about it. We were enjoying ourselves in a way that Internet since then never have delivered. We're so evolved these days, we think that this is it. But it won't be. I don't think that the digital status that we're in now, will be the same as in ten years. Probably not even 5 years. We always called it cyberspace, or just cyber. The sounds of the modem when connecting, it is a sound that I would recognize everywhere. Also the sound of lagging. That empty space sort of a sound. And the amazing fast conversations, with many people speaking at once and even though it looked impossible, we always knew who spoke to whom. It was in a way so easy. And then I (at least) started to go to certain channels (they would be called chat-rooms today) and I hooked up with peeps.. and found love and friendship and also doomed relationships with all sort of people, Because we were never a group, just a loosely set of individuals from all over the world. I remember never wanting to tell my rl people that I had met this and that person in cyber, but when it came up I was always in defensive mode. I knew what would come from telling this story of mine, contempt and judging. It was only something weird that I was doing, but look at it now. And yet I find myself thinking about then, and how things were so simple. You made a web-page out of HTML and it was simple and the web-pages looked like crap but there was pride in them. Because they were hand-crafted. And some of the people I met on IRC are still with me. Yes, it was a crazy time back then. I remember though, the first time I sent a photo of myself over to someone else in my channel. it was just wow. Then the photos of the others started to come and suddenly we weren't just nicks (nicknames of course!) on that black and white screen, we were people. When IRC got old, a lot of us moved over to LiveJournal, the pre-blogging time. We started to write about ourselves and our lives and thoughts and we often did it without any reservations or considerations for our family and friends. Okay, I did that. Maybe not all of us. But that little group from IRC kept in touch like that. We were a big community where, just as in Facebook now, we had our friend-groups and we commented on each others journals. And then there was a jump over to MySpace. Very short-lived that one. And then Facebook. And then some of us has started up new "bloggs" and some of us are still in the LiveJournal world. I sort of want to go back to those times of IRC, the excitement when someone came online, the person you just needed to speak with. The channels became more personalized and I know some that were in these hard-core political ones and loads that were just tech-freaks. I am pretty sure that some of those freaks were the ones who figured it all out. This Internet of ours. And yes, this became a darned paper so I shall post it on my blog, and why not here in Facebook too. Now, I could use Instagram but that one really don't like words. Or I could post a tiny tiny little amount of these words on Twitter. Or use Snap Chat if I want it to go away pretty much as soon as I posted it. Or I could... yeah, it's endless isn't it? Well it is not. At all. Lets see what happens shall we!

After reading this through, I realize that I've forgotten a huge part of my Internet. Gaming. Within WoW which is what I played for years, I was part of quite a few guilds, and within them, different discourse. I was in guilds where we'd discuss politics for hours, while "levelling " our characters. We'd discuss friendships and food and techology and ideas and music, and it was all ages, all genders, all equalities. Well, apart from how good or bad we were in the game that is to say, but really, for me - the game took second place from chatting to the other gamers.