I was asked by a 20 year younger friend how my internet was back then. I needed a moment but then I told her the story of an IRC channel and how we made the day for a young girl who happened to be on our IRC channel. Because this is what my internet was like back then and I wish sometimes it still was like this. Let me tell the story:
I was 25, the channel members were like 20 to 30 years old. Somehow this young girl found her way to us. She was 14 when she joined the channel. >>
mögen das
teilten dies erneut
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> her mother had died, her dad was still in grief. She had a twin sister.
I don’t know what made us take care of her online. We were there. We listened when she talked about here grief, her pain and how alone she felt. We do our best.
Then came the day where she told us that her dad demands that she and her twin sister will have a birthday party for her 16th birthday. „All the people of my school will come. For her. I don’t have friends at school. You are my friends.“ >>
Kevin Karhan hat dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> In a mood I said „well, we could come.“ Tje rest agreed - we could come.
„But what should I say to my dad?“ - I suggested „I have some people I want to invite. My friends from the internet“. I did not really think that she said this to her father. It was a bad joke I thought. Well, little did I know that she was so desperate that she asked her dad „can my friend from the internet come?“. He said yes. >>
Kevin Karhan hat dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> We all said „we‘ll come!“ and so it happened that 15 adults went to a 16th birthday party.
We coordinated in another channel that she did not know that we bought presents, made cake and planned games. And of course a cake fight.
The day came. Several cars arrived at the house and Metall heads, Goths and Punks arrived at „the venue“ :D >>
Kevin Karhan hat dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> We had so much fun and made her day. We laughed more than her sister with her „cool friends“. We were the perfect guests. We played games, we laughed. SHE laughed. Later she said the first times for months.
We just were us. Of course we did not drink or take drugs. Of course we did not swear the amount we normally did.
It was a perfect 16th birthday for her. For us it was meeting a friend. I still do not know her „real name“ because her real name is her IRC nick. >>
Kevin Karhan hat dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> and today, ca. 20 years later, we still talk every now and then. We are still part of her life.
6 years ago she was living in Paris, had a boyfriend in Berlin. She was visiting him for her birthday. He called her when she arrived in Berlin at the airport and told her that this relationship has ended.
The person she called was me. She spent the weekend on my couch and again I tried to create her a great birthday.
She played with Barbara, I ordered food, we watched silly TV shows. >>
Kevin Karhan hat dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •>> at the end she had a a few decent days with some fun and could fly home and was not totally desperate.
She could call at 3 in the morning and I would write into an IRC channel that she needs us and we would do everything we could to be there. And she would do the same for us.
And that is the internet I hold dear. The internet I love and miss. The internet that mad the day for a 16 year old girl that thought she had no one in the world. The internet that proved her wrong.
~ fin
Andreas Kilgus mag das.
teilten dies erneut
Kevin Karhan, Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦, Dieu und Seitansbraten haben dies geteilt.
Casey
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •teilten dies erneut
Kevin Karhan und Sebiturbo💉💉💉💉💉🌱🇺🇦 haben dies geteilt.
Kevin Karhan
Als Antwort auf Casey • • •Nine Oh Real
Als Antwort auf Kevin Karhan • • •tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •mögen das
Andreas Kilgus mag das.
teilten dies erneut
Kevin Karhan, moschlar und Detlef Steuer haben dies geteilt.
Leah
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Chris* Lawaai
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Armin Hanisch
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Bobo_PK 🦄
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I also went to a wedding of a friends mum. It was the first time we met in real life. I met him on Worms Armageddon and we had become really close friends. Later I went to his own wedding as well. It was nice in those little special interest communities.
Nike Leonhard
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •jan guerillahandwerker ullrich
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •marzuq märzenbecher
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Arnim Sommer 🇪🇺
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Anikke 🌻 🚴 ♀️ #ichbinantifa
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •BarbNerdy 🐿️
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf BarbNerdy 🐿️ • • •BarbNerdy 🐿️
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •awwwwh.....
was ? 😿
sparta
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf sparta • • •sparta
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Jan Lehnardt
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •SunDancer
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Weggezogen Feminin
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •FemmeNoire
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Marco
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •This was not only the internet back then, but the whole world.
We missed the point of being alive during the past 20 years.
Kévin NEYERS CIVY
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •this was the kind of internet i used to have when i was young too.
Thanks for remembering me that.
I dont know why it has changed so much.
Probably because of Facebook and Youtube and Tiktok and Instagram are now defining how we "should" use internet (to improve their revenues).
Hopefully i think Discord still offers the same kind of place IRC was. So maybe it can still exist somewhere.
TheZorse
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Rimas Kudelis
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •オチュー🕊🇵🇸
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •without the IRL part, I had a similar thing been done too little lonely-with-no-friend-for-years ub highschool and kinda was a lifesaver too.
Thanks strangers of the net.
Happened on IRC, forum, and even world of warcraft.
But didn't happened since the social network ; I sometimes wonder if it's about me changing or the social fabric of internet (probably both tbh).
Der Teilweise
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •felixmüde
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Amazing that this was able to happen...
Thanks for sharing
WearyBonnie
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I was also on IRC at the age of 14, and this was pretty much the vibe! I'm not in touch with many folks from back then except for the ones who ended up becoming family 💚
Mona⁷
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Patrick Hadfield
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Jana
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •It makes me feel nostalgic for a time of the internet of which I only got to experience a little bit of the end of.
Thanks for sharing.
Brain Bug
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •KB Sez
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Thanks for sharing.. You all earned a ton of Karma points that day and every day since.
Yeah, this is the Internet I remember. Community boards where we policed ourselves and if someone got out of line the community just naturally took care of it by shunning them and ostracizing them till they left or straightened out.
Middle of the night logging into BBS boards to check if anyone had posted a follow up...
MakeItSo
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •ghostdancer
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Steffi the Redhead
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •VHG 🇪🇺🇺🇦
Als Antwort auf Steffi the Redhead • • •tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf VHG 🇪🇺🇺🇦 • • •Cocaine Owlbear
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •retech
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Truly beautiful and gives me some hope.
I miss IRC too.
schrotthaufen
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf schrotthaufen • • •To rejoin these old channels!
schrotthaufen
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •You’re right, I should visit the ones that still exist more often.
Ulf Seltmann
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •ij
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I feel you. I experienced similar. Those times were special.
And to some degree these times lasts until these days, because I were in IRC, chatted in some channels, met some people, came together with a girl from thet channel, went to a party, met others from the channel on the same day - and then there was SHE!
Instantly regretted that I came together with the other girl from earlier that day, but SHE was in another relationship.
Years passed by and to make a long story short: we met again, first on the very same IRC channel, than IRL and we are now married for >16 years.
And there are other couples from that channel that are still together today.
Later this year there will be a channel party at the home of one of those couples.
Again: those were the days! And I'm glad were were part of it! 🙂
ij
Als Antwort auf ij • • •Part of the magic, I think, was that IRC focussed on text, IMHO. You could have great chats with foreign people, those chats went sometimes deep and foreign people became friends. We all shared the same magic of discovering the Internet and to meet other people just by typing chat messages.
OTOH, I'm still on IRC, in the same channels I were like 20 years ago. Some channels grew big in the high times of IRC (like #debian.de, went through turbulances, etc), some are small, unknown channels with a handful of users, some channels are just plain dead.
Back in the days I remember being a regular on #hallo and #flirt.de...
Oh well...
Ludwig Vielfrass
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •There was so much potential to really unite people, but people who wanted to make money no matter the costs came in and all but destroyed it. The good news is all the old protocols still work: IRC, SSH, FTP, heck even HTTP doesn't need to be the hellscape it has become.
This was a great story, and I appreciate your sharing it here.
Easydor
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Benny
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Sheldon
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I remember that Internet. There's a woman out there by the name of Penny Douglas who lived in South Africa who probably never knew just how far a few kind words propelled a tortured 20 something in Boston.
I've always remembered that and somewhere along the way, I hope I've paid my dues forward to someone in the exact same way. Today we are drowning in messages. It's almost entirely noise, but the right message at the right time can still alter the course of a life.
teilten dies erneut
tomate 🍅 und Aurin Azadî haben dies geteilt.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf Sheldon • • •Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I remember those days too. My first experience of the support online communities can offer was when I was going through a painful divorce. I discovered Bianca’s Smut Shack, the first web-based chat site, in its early days. Yes, there was a lot of ‘smut’, but also a group of regulars who loved and supported each other. It certainly helped me through a dark time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca.c…
defunct online community forum, established February 1994
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Thomas Fuglseth
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Bit of a tangent, but you made me think of this post I came across a while back.
(Edit: linking to the original source since this blew up a bit: bsky.app/profile/shortestwitch… )
teilten dies erneut
tomate 🍅, Cheatha, Nike Leonhard, Aurin Azadî und Kevin Karhan haben dies geteilt.
YHSI
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •crypticcelery 🔜 GPN
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •It does feel like something missed there, though, maybe, just maybe, it could be that again.
Autoerotic Defenestration
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Sensitiver Inhalt
that's the same internet that found me alone in a hotel on a business trip on my birthday, which was okay as such
But what made me cry bitter tears that evening was that the husband of one of the people on the knitting forum had died by his own hand.
We had supported her for over a year in handling his complex health issues. We were her family and she was ours. And suddenly, unexpectedly, it was over
I cried so hard for two people I had never met.
Mira
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Hapi
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •My human sometimes tells stories like that, from 'when the Usenet was still text only'. But I made a mastodon account, searched for other plushies and Blåhajer and met really great friends! We have lots of fun together in the plushieverse. When we are nearby, we meet and cuddle, that is what we plushies do. When a plushie needs support or help, we help, also when a plushie needs support with their human.
And my human keeps saying: 'it is just like when I was young!'
Dusty Miller
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •♥️
kaiserkiwi
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I miss this internet. I pretty much was the 16 year old girl in your story. A bunch of strangers held me up in my darkest times back then.
I still hope we can go back a bit sometimes in the future.
woozong 🅅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •selfhosting.couchsurfing
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •silfra
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Lana
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •DJ🌞
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Dodo is müde.
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Holgintheair
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •CaledonMoneypit 🇨🇦
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Over 20 years ago, I met a group of guys online in a group focused on golf. After almost a year of internet chats, we decided to meet for a golf weekend in Virginia. I drove 7 hours thinking I was nuts to meet total strangers. Our group, from different walks of life and areas of North America, became better friends and had several more trips in subsequent years. Although 2 are now deceased, the one remaining friend and I still talk a dozen times a year.
lizzzzard
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •the Internet really was like that back then. You were just humans getting in honest contact with other humans.
Also, the "special interest group hangout" that irc chat rooms were did work better for developing a friend group than today's social media does.
Momo
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Kevin Karhan
Als Antwort auf Momo • • •markusmunch
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Uckermark MacGyver
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Su-Shee
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Jan Lehnardt
Als Antwort auf Su-Shee • • •Monospace Mentor
Als Antwort auf Jan Lehnardt • • •About Incredible Doom
Matthew Bogart (Incredible Doom)Tattie
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •bison ✅
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Agarwaën
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •IRC is still there, but all these little communities i had in the day have disappeared. I know only of technical channels… But some of the friends are still here ! I also made a lot of friends via MMORPG guilds.
xs4me2
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Simply wonderful!
Thanks for sharing.
wish nu
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Just Tom...
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •std::living std::fish
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Gerva
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •I remember getting into that corner of the internet first to "fool around" and "meet chicks" but I ended learning about real human connection through a computer screen. Also with RL chatroom-wide meetings at bars and parks...
Björn 🇪🇺 Starkimarm
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Dave Bergen
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •In bouncing around to all the different social media options as I unsubscribed from Meta owned apps it has been great to have some real human connection from time to time.
It is possible to be real with people online, it just takes a bit of courage or desperation depending on where people are at.
spino
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Back then, me and my friends clearly understood that we'd just seen the future. I don't think for the Internet we'd thought this future though.
Piiieps & Brummm
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •My journey on the Internet started 30 years ago. Most of my dearest friends I met on IRC for the first time. My wife about 25 years ago.
Without IRC I would not be, who I am.
colapunk
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Desatyr
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •So wonderful.
I met my wife back in those times.
For most people then it was awkward to meet someone out of the Internet .
It worked out
😀
Volkmar
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Fabian (WobIntosh)
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Chris Johnson
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •IT-Awareness, Fabian Lucchi
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •LJ
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •what a lovely story! I wasn't involved in many irc channels, but joined a bunch of early AOL message boards. This was 1993. I was a new mother, no family nearby, spouse who worked 14+ hour days. It was my lifeline.
A few years later, I joined a poetry message board. Ultimately became one of the mods. When you read someone's poetry, that is a window into their whole self. I made a lot of close friends there.
Fast forward to 2004 or so.
(1/?)
LJ
Als Antwort auf LJ • • •My 12 y.o. spawn was visiting his bestie who had moved to Oregon. United allowed 12 year olds to fly as adults. Kiddo hated the fuss of flying as an unaccompanied minor.
Boston to Oregon was no problem
Coming home, he got stranded in Denver by canceled flights.
Airline put adults up in a hotel. Brought in a supervising person to stay with unaccompanied minors in an airport lounge.
My kid was left in limbo, released on his own to sleep in the terminal.
I was a wreck.
2/?
LJ
Als Antwort auf LJ • • •he was bored & annoyed. (Aside - we nicknamed him Viktor Navorsky after the movie The Terminal).
I recalled that one of my poetry friends was a grandmother in Denver. I reached out to her for help. She immediately offered to pick him up, host him overnight & take him back to the airport the next morning.
Remember: I had never met this person IRL. The common wisdom was that anyone on the internet was a predator.
But if that were true, this person had been playing the longest con!
3/?
LJ
Als Antwort auf LJ • • •So between having him sleep in a deserted airport terminal vs at a home with a friend from my internet poetry board, I chose the latter.
Spawn got dinner, got to sleep in a bed, (with bonus dog!), got back to the airport & out on the first flight the next morning.
The grandmother was indeed a grandmother. As kind & gentle as her poetry had indicated.
But ever after, my kids teased me about the bad example I set for them vis a vis internet safety.
/fin
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf LJ • • •tomate 🍅
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Matthijs
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •Sven Kloppenburg
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Sebiturbo💉💉💉💉💉🌱🇺🇦
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Not too long ago we had a wonderful experience with @picasso who is not with us anymore. Here on Mastodon.
Suzka
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •hisgolu
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Masto.poetry
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •Cerstin Mahlow
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •FiXato
Als Antwort auf tomate 🍅 • • •It to me also shows why I dislike the term IRL, In Real Life, so much when used to describe offline life compared to online ones like IRC; it insinuates that the people and experiences online aren't part of Real Life. While in reality it's still real people with very much real feelings on the other end of those handles.
tomate 🍅
Als Antwort auf FiXato • • •