Remember when:
* people discussed things instead of mindless e-babble
* there were no bots
* when there was a limit of 10 on a channel
* channels had numbers?
* IRC was useful
I do - it's too bad it devolved into the noisy din of
non-conversations it is now. I miss the people who I used to talk
to and meet there. (Most of them gave up LONG before me.)
But - 0 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes.
There's plenty of other things I can do than waste time
watching the octo-hourly "Age check" "Gender Check" "Geo check"
"mother's maiden name check" and all the "e-giggling" that goes
on. I have enough contact with people who hate, bigots, troublemakers,
etc. that I need to help out trace problems on #gblf.
I'm sure the real world can use my new-found energy creatively.
One last question though: how *do* you make text underlined?
(I know about reverse video, but never botherted to look up underlining...)
BBC, taking Waldeaux with him
> I don't think I was ever an addict, per se, but I'm sick
>and tired of the dumbing-down trend that IRC has taken over the
>last 4 years.
I'm not so sure it's a dumbing-down trend. Even in the "good old
days", channels with lots of people tended to have a higher percentage
of meaningless chatter ("hi", "bye", "let's move to a channel <10")
than channels with fewer people. Since IRC is now bigger (not better),
this is a bad trend.
I'm not sure why it became much harder to meet interesting people,
though. Seems to be some sort of group insanity: you take one or two
freshmen, and they can be interesting people. You take 10, and they
turn into an insane mob of clueless dweebs, self-reinforcing each
other's antisocial behavior.
In any case, the bloom is off the rose.
>> I don't think I was ever an addict, per se, but I'm sick
>>and tired of the dumbing-down trend that IRC has taken over the
>>last 4 years.
>I'm not so sure it's a dumbing-down trend. Even in the "good old
>days", channels with lots of people tended to have a higher percentage
>of meaningless chatter ("hi", "bye", "let's move to a channel <10")
>than channels with fewer people. Since IRC is now bigger (not better),
>this is a bad trend.
At the time "33" was pretty high-signal to noise... it didn't
get really stoopid until #gblf. And even then it did and still
does have its moments. The spacing just gets wider and wider.
>I'm not sure why it became much harder to meet interesting people,
>though. Seems to be some sort of group insanity: you take one or two
>freshmen, and they can be interesting people. You take 10, and they
>turn into an insane mob of clueless dweebs, self-reinforcing each
>other's antisocial behavior.
Doesn't ahve to be freshmen, and there are lots of interesting
people. But unless you went to a totally secret +spim channel
you ran a very good chance that someone would ruin anything that
got started. I suppose there is in my case some degree of terroriality:
having been there for 4 years, it weas hard watching the tenor of the
channel I was mostly on get noisier and noisier... sort of
like an e-Alzhiemers. People I got used to seeing got fed up and
left, and while new people came aboard, the %age of intersting
ones was much less than the %age of noisy ones.
Sigh. 0 months, 0 days, 20 hours.
ex-BBC
Look! Look!
The coding culprit in person is here to answer your plea.
Underlines are coded with ctrl-V's.
Somebody else also added BOLDface - with ctrl-_.
What's next.. cursive? Just kidding.
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