I’ve been talking on the Internet since almost its conception. Oh, that makes me sound so old, and maybe I am finally getting “that old”. Still, when the early days of bulletin boards developed into forums, I was there with them, learning along with everyone else. The forums were a huge improvement since we could talk live but also post messages and answer them at our leisure, and the interface was much friendly, and grew friendlier. Then AOL moved in and everything started to change.
ANYONE could now talk on the Internet. This was good and bad. Before, intellectuals and scholars ruled the Internet. Now, 10, 12, and 15 year old gigglers could come in and chatter away. The language deteriorated and topics went from stimulating and intellectual (at least where I hung out) to modest and…well, dull.
Today, kids are still chatting, but the intellectuals have aged and the kids are now many of the bright shinning minds on the horizon, and the chatting goes on.
IRC is gaining ground again as a legitimate form of communication, even if its roots are “ancient”, right along with Yahoo, MSN, Skype, and AOL chats. The choices for chatting online are very diverse, but I’ve taken to doing work projects with IRC again, which is wonderful.
I can work with people on projects without leaving the comfort of my office. Instantly, I’m connected with people in Germany, England, Israel, Australia, Japan, and all over the world. We can ask questions on technical issues, get help, help each other, and be silly from time to time to relieve the tensions of our hard work.
So I’m relearning about using IRC and I found a very simple IRC Tutorial that helps me as I learn how to do things again.
For instance, if I want to change my nickname from relle to relle|away, I type /nick relle|away and it changes. The forward slash must be there to indicate a command.
Many people leave comments rather than dialog. To leave such comments, type /me runs into a corner and the IRC will return relle runs into a corner.
The use of shortcut jargon and smilies still holds sway, like brb means “be right back” and rotfl means “rolling on the floor laughing”. And a wink ;-) still goes a long way to emulate satire and silliness.
Here are some more references to help you learn more about IRC chats.