One of the first things I got into when I first plunged myself into the world of the internet was the IRC chat rooms. I must have been about 15 years old when I first entered one for the first time. It was one where people met to talk about Japanese cartoons. In time I made some friends and migrated over to one of the larger networks, EFNET. We spent hours every day talking about random shit. Then of course the older people all started traveling to meet each other, and eventually have sex. It caused a lot of drama. The most typical story would be one member or the other would be in an online relationship, travel to meet the person in question, screw like rabbits, and then the following morning whilst the partner was taking a shower, use their computer finding out, reading chat logs, that the individual was having cyber sex with about three of his/her friends in the channel. This would result in channel scandal, and members of the chat room would takes sides and eventually split off into two separate rooms, only to have the process repeat itself in some other parallel scenario. Being one of the youngest members, we just sat and watched all the drama. It was very educational.

In time, I got fed up with the constant repetition of it all. I considered on several occasions to go meet some people myself, but it never really worked out seeing as I was too young to travel alone to visit complete strangers. So I left.

Every couple of years since then, I stop and think about what happened to those people, and how the chat rooms would have evolved since those days. From time to time I act on my curiosity. I download a copy of MIRC and travel back to EFNET which is all but deserted these days. #cyberheaven, #17-25, #chathouse are completely empty save for #loonybin where the IRC bot Johnson still stands guard from an attack. Otherwise it remains lifeless with no sign on activity since the days we once hung out there.