I didn’t get on line till the late 90s and my few forays into chatrooms were horrible. I found them to be clique-ish - if you weren’t one of “them” you were largely ignored. Conversations were full of in-jokes, again seemingly to exclude outsiders. All in all, a waste of my time. So I stuck with IMing with friends and random strangers until I discovered the magical world of message boards.
I will grant that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time exploring chat rooms - my first few experiences just soured me. Plus I was in my 40s and I wasn’t interested in the high-school-popular-kids attitudes I encountered.
I used to use the Yahoo chat rooms quite a bit in the late 90s, and had some good conversations. Gradually the spambots took over, and then they shut them down altogether.
Yahoo chatrooms still exist - they’re mostly filled with spam now, mind, and so I too am looking for an alternative. But they do exist - you just have to have Yahoo’s messenger to access them, I think. (Or a similar, non-Windows alternative; there are some third party programmes like Pidgin that also work.)
I haven’t had a good chat since I first got on the net. And that was only because I was young enough to talk to kids who (back then) weren’t obsessed with the whole bf/gf thing. Nowadays, the only good chats tend to be with people I already know. Occasionally I’ll meet a good person online, but there’s no way it was in a chat room, as the bad people will drown them out.
When they started, this side of the Atlantic, Chatrooms, whatever their titles were usually full of silly little children pretending to be adults.
That is not a criticism, I actually mean schoolkids pretending to be adults.
Backpacking Chatroom ?
Full of children.
University Chatroom ?
Full of children.
I think thats why everyone gave up on the Chatroom idea, though thats only my opinion.
My first experience with chat rooms around 1990 or so was on a Science Fiction Writers of American round table on GEnie. Here you had a grouping of professional SF writers, all very articulated and more than willing to share interesting opinions.
What did you get?
X has entered
Y: Hi, X
Z: Hi, X
Q: Greetings, X!
X: Hi everyone. What’s up?
Y: We were discussing the meaning of life.
X: Well, in my opinion, life is like a beanstalk.
Q: Have to go now. Cat needs to be fed.
Y: Bye Q
Z: Goodbye Q
Y: A beanstalk?
X: Goodbye, Q
Q has left
A had entered.
Y: Hi, A
Z: Hi, A
X: Hey, Q. Did you get my email?
I know this thread is really old… but who knows maybe someone will read this.
The state of chat sites these days is really sad. For the past couple of days I tried to find a decent site where you can just have normal conversations with strangers. Mission completely failed.
Offline (and on some forums/community sites) people talk about all sorts of things, but in chat rooms it seems like all that people care about is Sex and being rude.
It is really sad, because the Internet has so much potential for interesting conversations. You can find people from anywhere in the world that have the same interests or went through something similar you went through. You can talk to someone anytime of the day…
So, I decided to create a chat website that will be different (hopefully). It has a unique concept that will facilitate better conversations. Plus, I will work my a** off to ban and ward off bots, trolls and mean people. I am creating it with my husband and hopefully we can get beta testers to try it in about 5 months.
Going to chat rooms makes me scared that our efforts will be wasted, but seeing people like on this forum gives me hope, that it is possible to have a good conversations through chats.
We are looking for early people that will want to try out the site when it is ready. You can just email me and I will send you login data when it is set-up.
What happened to all the good chatrooms? My generation came along. Enjoy.
Edit: But no, seriously. Used to be only the dorkiest of the dorks really knew enough about the internet and computers to join chatrooms. Now every dork and his mom knows about them.
Well, I don’t imagine EVERYONE would enjoy it, but over at the video-game boardthat I frequent, there’s a chatroom that is frequented by mature, grown-ups that like to talk shop about video games / the gaming industry in general / etc.
I have never witnessed any children (or utter morons) in the chatroom there, though quite frequently it is empty altogether. YMMV.
I am creating it with my husband and hopefully we can get beta testers to try it in about 5 months.