To my dismay, I learned today that bash.org went down some time ago (2023). For those who don’t know what bash.org is, or was I guess, it’s a collection of chat snippets from IRC channels. Sort of a “best of” of the earlier days of IRC. Fortunately, a few archivists preserved the collection, and this is one of those archives. The best are pretty good, the worst are… pretty bad. Lots of racism. There are a lot of entries, some of which are still quoted around the internet today, and they represent a crowd-curated snapshot of what the internet was like around the turn of the century.
A selection of notable pieces in the collection (that is, I just went through and picked some I remember from the days of yore):
hunter2
types of people
lost machine
helping a newbie
inverted b
experiencing nature
neighborhood bonfire
advanced robotics
business acumen
essence of IRC
top minds of IRC
Oh man, I miss those days.
The internet was simpler back then. Or we were; maybe both.
the internet was better back then. sweeter, more innocent.
Before the Corponation attacked.
There’s lots of good new stuff since then.
But it’s all monetized, and my anger at that outweighs any joy I feel. I blame Reagan.
Thats the great thing.
You can point your finger and blame Reagan for almost anything, and you’d be right a disturbing number of times!
While it isn’t the same as the good old days, I’m still on the irc. I have no plans to ever leave.
For me, I lost the community (they’ve been shut down) and I absolutely don’t have the time to lurk until conversation starts up at 3am like I did when I was a teen.
I get that, totally. I found a new community about 15 years ago or so and am part of a few now. They tend to be active most of the time to some degree at least, but not so active I feel like its too crowded. I am sure in the bigger group its always 95% lurkers still and they just chime in sparsely.