I've been thinking of doing this for a while now, but a couple of straws fell on me on the last couple of days, either of which had the capacity to break a camel's back.
First was when I tried to join #gts and was immediately kickbanned by radio_1 with the comment that 'ban evasion wasn't going to work' -- a completely idiotic comment given that I had not been banned to begin with. Not the first time that Radio_1 gratuitously fucked me over, but it's the last.
Got to thinking about how all this started, and mulling over whether it had given me much satisfaction.
First time on IRC was via netcom I think. Using their software's client. Later mIRC. All the action was on efnet in #gbs and #gts. I went on to concentric and then mindspring and finally earthlink. Tried several clients. One was Global Chat by Quarterdeck. Their client was nice because I could go on efnet and undernet at the same time with one client. Also used OpenChat and Gamma Tech IRC for OS/2 before IBM abandoned that operating system. Note this was around the time everyone found they could blue-screen you with some hacker program because microsoft (and os/2's) tcp stacks were buggy (as I understood it) so people were always doing that and people would suddenly vanish only to return steaming mad or utterly perplexed at what had happened. This was before the stacks were fixed and everyone had a firewall. More stupidity and a few bad apples driving out the good money.
#gts/efnet was a zoo. Dumb ops banning people for fun just because they could. #gbs had a pet ircop (redbird) who never talked, and it was dumb too. But I met jakey[age] and he was the first one I had interesting chats with. We had some nice chats for a week or two before he faded away. From minnesota. Think he's still on undernet as some kind of big shot op somewhere. But when I talked to him there, that jakey[xx] was brushed me aside.
Somehow after that I worked #gam on efnet. Some kid from Vancouver had a bot there and it was his channel but he wasn't good at it, or bored with it. He had another op named texassy, who, together with some white guy from minnesota nicknamed mahal took over that channel and set up a whole bunch of other channels too, essentially staking claims to the whole gay namespace. I heard their deal was to give the channels to someone for a fee, which was nominally to host and administer the bots (and whoever has the bots on efnet effectively owns the channel anyhow).
After that takeover a slew of us jumped ship. There was a nice guy nicknamed tqboy who got together with me and we had a botless channel we called #gayscifi. Then one day someone put some bots in it and took it over, because we had gathered a small following. So I quickly jumped ship on that usurper.
The chronology on this becomes somewhat cloudy, but I did get onto #gayla around the time the channel was besieged by some supposedly young bi asian guy with bots. The original owners and the glenda/glinda bot ultimately disappeared and a new host of players soon began to populate the ops. I've always had the suspicion that the mysterious attacker was somehow in cahoots with the new management. Included in the new management was singer, who said he was the power behind the scenes, and indeed he did get me ops, but some of the other ops were jealous bitches and ultimately I abandoned it. Then they did the silly voice thing on the channel, which, together with some snotty ops, ultimately killed it. Theres still a slew of nicks there. But there hasn't been fresh blood in years. Nobody talks. It's like visiting a mauseleum at Forest Lawn. Good riddance.
Then someone from either #gayniceguys or #gaydecentguys had a meltdown and a few of us began #gaypeanuts. There was an interesting guy there nicknamed Fish. Fish and I had a good run, and then efnet was hit hard by black hats and almost ceased to function. Fish and I went to dalnet to look for a safe haven and started #gayfriendly and got a little following. We tried to convince thirsty or whatever his name was who started #gaypeanuts to come there too in case efnet died, and he blew a fuse, claiming we were undermining him and trying to steal his channel or something. It was a real shock because we were really only interested in saving the place, so I got a bit pissed off and stopped going to efnet. Fish also looked briefly at starchat, and we prowled about there a bit. For some reason Fish had a meltdown then and to my knowledge I have never seen him again.
I went to some tiny channel on Starchat (itself a tiny IRC net) which was owned by some doctor ???. Anyhow, they almost had it made when webtv suddenly made IRC available and for some reason hordes of webtv users ended up on starchat. A seven man channel suddenly had 40 users. So did the management welcome the users? Nah. They started banning everyone because 'this is not a sex channel' -- like the newbies had any concept of what they were doing wrong. So they drove off everyone and became a little 7 man channel again, where everyone but me was an op, and where they had some grandiose web site that served no purpose whatsoever. One day I got very angry with the doc, told him so, and never went back. Later I started having problems getting on starchat at all, because of ident problems or some technical thing that they did to combat hackers. As I recall they banned my entire ISP (earthlink?) (but I could get on anyhow simply by dialing a mindspring modem) ... Anyhow I abandoned starchat for dalnet.
dalnet was really the highpoint of my existence thanks to barclay. But sadly he was nice to me purely in the hopes he could get something out of it. When it became clear he couldn't, he soured on me. Finally he gave up IRC and left, and I left dalnet too -- as did everyone else -- because it was attacked and it became almost impossible to log on and maintain any stable chat. The hackers have gone, but dalnet has never come back.
Before I left I had put my foot back in the undernet pond. I looked at #gaycollegeboys and #gaysocalif, but after starzl had left #gaysocalif in charge of brstowguy it had become a very unfriendly place. #gcb had always been dumb too, using the "this is not a sex channel" excuse to wantonly kick some people while the ops made continued and blatant sexual remarks. I remember some names in particular -- myndstorm being one and vball another -- think I saw them on efnet too when it was in its glory. Around that time some disaffected folks from #gcb started #gcb101. A clever channel name. There was much fun in there, and everyone was excited. For some reason I couldn't deal with undernet's chanserv because of my email, so when they got X, being a non-entity, I got no ops goodies from ethan. Not sure I would have anyhow. But funny: once everyone got his or her ops, chat completely died. Now the channel is in IRC's oort belt.
When I absolutely first went on undernet, I met someone whose boyfriend had the nickname lestat. This lestat had done a very cool web site, which I admired. I talked to the two of them a few times and thought they were nice. So when #gcb had a lestat too, I thought this might be the guy. But no, he was some political arch conservative who got into my face one day with his retarded politics. From that point on, I forgot him. Sadly, it turned out that almost all of #gcb espoused this philosophy. It also turned out that no one there was under thirty, and most were over 45. These were the kind of people who would have voted for the nazis and then thanked them for the train ride to the extermination camp. Anyhow I watched #gcb die a slow, miserable death. Towards the end -- other than me -- the only people there were people who had ops, and therefore had a stake in going there. The channel still exists, but the only purpose that serves is to keep it from falling into the black hole empire of twinkass16 (a story unto itself).
So ultimately, about half a year ago, I came to loathe and despise everyone on that channel and tried to find a home elsewhere. But there is no home. Most channels are dead. The only regulars are those who are members of one or another of the several cliques of ops who seem to run all the channels. Chat often simply consists of some wannabe kissing some owner or op's ass, obviously currying favor or at least attract attention. I lurked around for half a year and can't remember one good chat or one nice person. IRC is a dead medium. It has been overtaken by the technology of web chat and instant messaging; and its repellant hierarchy of ircops, bot owners, channel managers, ops, and 'voiced' immediately discourages participation by anyone new and interesting.
Nov 2007