It's like ICQ
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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20 years ago I was in college, it was earlyish days of piracy and the net admin had locked down all p2p protocols. I actually used irc bots to cruise file servers and request downloads. Not sure what protocol they were using for file transfer over mIRC but I got a lot of music that way. Netflix was also handy as a DVD burning service but that's another topic.
Back in the day I used direct connect, we had 100mbit internet (at my university), that was extremely fast back in the day.
it was probably DCC
IRC was and still is just fine. Not as flashy as some of the newer stuff it had everything you could ask for in text-based chat.
With all the garbage happening privacy-wise - breaches, data farming, ads, e2ee removal - with all well-known messengers, I've decided to take messaging into my own hands. The solution turned out to be a 25 year old system called XMPP. Like you say, XMPP isn't as flashy (some desktop clients still look like AOL) but is solid.
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Well no, it doesn't keep a history of chats for once. You don't have a record of conversations if your client wasn't running at that time. There's a few other limitations that I'm not familiar with, that prompted many people and orgs to switch to things like rocket chat or matrix
So instead of keeping a record yourself, you pay someone else/use someone else’s computer to do it for you.
That's why IRC bouncers exist, and then you have some IRC servers getting pissy about running one unless they like you or you're special (staff)
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I downloaded my first “porn” image that I got grounded over from something that predated mIRC but I can’t remember exactly what it was, I ended up using mIRC and then ICQ a lot years later. Like a dumbass once the picture I got finally downloaded, I printed it because I wanted to delete it off the computer. Then I got really into the MUD I was playing at the time, gemstones III, and forgot the picture on the printer. I think it was just a sexy picture of Reece Witherspoon but my parents were the kind that thought I was a devil worshipper since I liked to play DnD and these satanic text games that don’t make any sense.
Reminds me of waiting for a porn image to load one row of pixels at a time on dial up. Teenage boys desperate for porn lol!
Progressive JPEG was a major advance, as one saw a low-resolution image that gradually became higher resolution, had some idea as to the contents of the lower half of the image prior to waiting for half of the data involved to be transferred.
IRC came out in 1988, so an Internet chat service that predates it must have been exceptionally early.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_%28software%29
talk (software)
talk is a Unix text chat program, originally allowing messaging only between the users logged on to one multi-user computer—but later extended to allow chat to users on other systems.
Although largely superseded by IRC and other modern systems, it is still included with most Unix-like systems today, including Linux,[1] BSD systems[2] and macOS.[3]
No Wikipedia page, but there's also PHONE:
https://marc.vos.net/books/vms/help/phone/
Invokes the OpenVMS Phone utility (PHONE). The Phone utility is designed to simulate some of the features of actual telephone communications. You can use the Phone utility to communicate with other users on your system or with any other system connected to your system by DECnet for OpenVMS. To invoke the Phone utility, enter the PHONE command at the DCL prompt and press RETURN.
I've used both on VMS.
It was just what I used before mIRC, it may very well have been IRC, I just don’t remember what the app was. This would have been in 90-91
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of course gen x is overlooked again
That's usually the case, sure, but you realize in this instance they don't mean boomer as actual boomer, but as anyone and everyone over 30?
That's a shit use of the term
I think for most teens everyone older than 30 is the same age -- old.
Ok boomer. /s
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I met my wife on IRC.
I also met your wife on IRC. Nice person, good choice. I'd say neither of you are the reacher in your relationship. Well done.
This sounds like a compliment, but I sincerely am not 100% sure.
Therefore, I choose to interpret as one. Thank you!
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Anyone from 28 and above will be easly called a boomer by 14 years old 😂 as a xenial here I used to feel weird maybe slightly offended...but I decided to enjoy it and keep my self entertained by dumb online fuedes and the alleged generational online wars that comes with...so yeah Long live the IRC
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idk if discord pushes server creation or if people are just real eager to moderate a space, but i cannot stand that seemingly every single one of my discord contacts has their own server with like 5-10 people, and that’s the only way they ever wanna chat.
like “yeah let’s play helldivers, pop in my discord so you can also listen to 3 people you don’t know who aren’t playing.”
maybe i’m just old.
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Im old as hell, what tf is IRC?
"Internet relay chat" it was the first major messaging protocol on the Internet. You would register an IRC number that was unique to you, and join one of the many different chat channels that anyone could create. The name of the chat would be what the intended topic of discussion was supposed to be, and show you how many people were in the room. Often times completely unmoderated, with a few select users having the rights to ban people if they happen to be in the chat at the time.
It was a wild time.
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Gen X Discord
Slack is just an IRC skin - change my mind
Easy - IRC worked way better and was way less miserable
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cherish it. the internet is gonna get progressively worse.
I downloaded my first 3 songs from IRC with MIRC. Took all night to download but man was I happy the next morning.
I refuse to believe someone has that SA emote hasn't heard of irc
I've seen kids with Nirvana t-shirts who knew nothing about the band. This might be similar.
You're probably right on there, I can't imagine how kids perceive this world now, and yet still, I do see the odd nirvana shirt among them.
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