" "...many are humorous, others are godawful boring, but they are an interesting voyeuristic glimpse into the life of people communicating online"
An early assessment
We tend to emote online, more freely then we might in person. I think sometimes it's because the natural buffers and interaction of being with someone, watching the gestures and responses help us to shape our own responses. Online, with little more then words and the occasional ":(", the power of physical gestures and the facial response are lost.
All of this makes many of us not only less sensitive, but more prone to miscommunication and verbal conflict. What happens in the end is here, at KungFu, the good, the bad and the uglyness of the online experience.
Introduction
Instant messaging has been around for years and came on the scene long before say Yahoo or American Online. It seems hard to explain, in the old days, if you were online you would chat via posting to a dialup based "bbs"message board or you'd log onto IRC -internet relay chat and find a channel -group by interest- of people to talk with and you'd chat with people from all over the country. And while there were many small Internet apps which were Unix based as well as AOL's proprietary predecessor to AOL Instant Messaging, it would be more then a decade before IM got big.
The company ICQ began to make the independent push with their own messaging product where anyone online could talk to anyone online, as long as they had ICQ. ICQ built a strong and popular following and created a small and relatively simple product for anyone online to communicate with anyone else, eventually AOL overhauled Instant Messenger so that non AOL users could also chat with their AOL friends. Microsoft and Yahoo have done the same, creating proprietary messaging apps connected to their own networks.
The whole benefit to Instant Messaging is that if you are online, you can chat in real time with other friends online. The act of text based communication while working, removes the need for the telephone and allows you to talk while you cruise online. Socially speaking we are different creatures online then off, online communication requires a different sort of emoting and expression. All in all, the culture of instant messaging, while similar to "phone speak" is a different language and structure of communication. Of course observing those conversations is also an interesting experience, many of the instant messaging apps have ways to record and none seem to limit your ability to "save your conversations" Below is a selection of conversations I have had with others or that others have shared with me. Many are humorous, others are godawful boring, but they are an interesting voyeuristic glimpse into the life of people communicating online..The Sessions
[start]-suck some dick
[start]-lice
[start]-memento
[start]-Moving to france
[start]-queer?
[start]-Threesomes
[start]-Bags and fags
[start]-Father Figures
[start]-Finding a good carry bag
[start]-peculiar people online
[start]-Bad music and bitches
[start]-Laughing at work
[start]-website bantering
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