IRC and ME

I connected to the network IRCnet. Some of the channels that I hung out on were #beginners, #casualchat, #casual, #cafebleu and #AllNightCafe. It took me quite a while to engage in some conversation because lots of folks were signing in and then out, but were not involved in conversant activity. What is that all about? Do people sign in and then immediately go to a private chat? And another thing, to the left was a list of people who were signed in to that channel; the list was huge on all channels. However, I have no idea where all those people were unless they were just observing and not participating at all. Another interesting experience was when the spammers were kicked of the channel, in fact when I signed on to #allnightcafe I was immediately kicked off because I was viewed as a spammer. I think that it is sad that spammers infect this form of communication, what a distraction. It seemed to me that the spammer’s comments were in a different color and I just ignored that color. In any case, I did engage in two rather lengthy conversations on two different channels. This was an enjoyable experience.

Since I had opportunity to converse with other chatters, I can definitely say that it was different from my interactions on LambdaMOO. First of all, there was not the same degree of arrogance with the interlocuters on the IRC chat as there was on LambdaMOO. In addition, the objectives of both types of interactions was different, this had a huge impact on the way that people communicated. IRC chat was a venue for socialization only, while LambdaMOO was a game where people could socialize or just play. I thought this comparison was interesting because in LambdaMOO conversations were easy to start because I could ask questions about the logistics of the game, where on IRC chat, it took effort to start a conversation that would engage others. I would say that most of the conversations on IRC chat were vacuous at best. In fact, I would posit that a younger generation of people frequent IRC chat, while LambdaMOO is filled with older, more experienced interlocuters. In any case, both experiences were interesting and if I frequent one of the forms of communication again, it would be LambdaMOO.