The first time I ever booted up America Online 2.0 (early adopter!) and jumped into a chat room, I was hooked. It no longer mattered that I hadn't been invited outside with the neighbor kids to play Ghost in the Graveyard, because I had 39 friends to talk about the Indiana Pacers with.
Over the years, I got my first screen name, downloaded AIM, left super emo away messages, put song lyrics in my profile. I was sub-tweeting before it was a fucking thing.
"Just wish some people wouldn't break promises…"
SportFreak0457
JDupri1470
Lazzzypimp39
AFstud39
Did you try to use any of these? Lol, they were mine.
Finally in high school I settled on TenaciousD05. A girl in my school tried to fight me for it because she claimed her nickname was 'tenacious.' I didn't even know what the word meant, I just knew that Tenacious D was a band that everyone seemed to like and that my name was David. Also i graduated in 2005. It worked on several different levels.
I spent 99% of free time on the web dropping hot lines like "Sup, not much u?" and "A/S/L/P4P" like I was a tortured teen in a Ready Player One-esque dystopian society. I remember the pang of excitement I would get in the pit of my stomach every time I heard a creaking door sound, OMG MAYBE THE GIRL I LIKE JUST LOGGED IN!
I would dabble in a few other chat based clients of the day, ICQ, MIRc and Yahoo to name a few, but then I got a cell phone and everything died out for a while in favor of texts.
I got to college and became cool and for the first time, living in the real world was preferable to hanging out online. I could pick up a bottle of vodka and invite over some chicks and discover what REAL fun is.
This of course all changed with the advent of the Smart Phone, once I got my first Blackberry curve, I was tracking down every sorority girl's PIN and BBMing the shit out of her at 2 in the morning. Hell, I wouldn't even have the common decency to say 'you up?' I just PING!!!d her straight away because I knew it would make her phone vibrate.
Blackberry died and now we are all on iMessage, Snapchat, kik, What'sAPP or some other mobile based chat client, but that's just in our personal lives. We each have 40+ hours a week that we are forced to stare at a computer screen. Obviously the thirst doesn't stop just because we are staring at spread sheets, so let's launch an investigation about office communicators and what it says about you…
-G Chat…the OG
There was a time when I thought getting a girl's PIN was the holy grail, but nothing would light my spirits on fire more than seeing the small notification hot girl@gmail.com has invited you to chat.
I would say probably half the relationships I have been in since 2010 started on Gchat. The smooth interface, the illusion that you are merely checking emails, the fact that you can throw fire at multiple chicks at once NOT TO MENTION web 1.0 emojis. On Gchat I feel very comfortable. I also can say hello to friends, acquire information from people and of course hide with the classic Do Not Disturb option. Gchat is not the sexiest client on this list, but it's the most mainstream and functional. I will always fuck around with new chat clients but I will always stay loyal to Gchat.
Unless they try to force me onto hangouts again, fuck that.
-Facebook communicator…for the one who gives zero fucks.
Facebook communicator is essentially the same as Gchat but it runs through Facebook and syncs with most phones. In a bind, it is a surefire way to get a message to someone whether they are at their computer or on the go. Also, every single one of your 2,000 Facebook friends is on it in some capacity. You can share photos, create groups, it's great…
…but for the fact that your employer may not love you just hanging out on Facebook all day. Obviously stalking your ex girlfriend's 'adult spring break' photos is more exciting than staring at emails from Rob in IT begging you to change your password in light of the Sony hack, but some degree of subtlety is always key in the chat game.
-Skype…humble braggers
I am not into video chat. I have probably done in three times total in my life; once to talk to my family when I was abroad, twice when girls had agreed to chat with me topless. Skype definitely had a moment late in college, and it still might be used for people abroad, but with the advent of FaceTime it really has become a dinosaur. That said, according to the 3 people I surveyed at my dinner party last week, it is a thing that people use for general chat still. I think using Skype is essentially like using What'sAPP domestically, you want people to know you travel internationally a lot and you're just like used to using this.
Oh…good for you. Also while on the subject of video chat, recently a lot of my slightly younger friends started FaceTiming me instead of calling (ew) or texting. Do not do this. I do not want to see your face, I do not want you to see mine. If you are trying to get me to come somewhere and I don't seem to want to go just send me a picture of drugs. It will work.
-Desktop enabled iMessage..no separation of church and state
There is a difference between texting someone and the stream of conscious ramblings of chat. The problem with people that do desktop iMessage is that it blurs this line. Let's say you are trying to fuck someone. You would never in a million years send more than 2 texts in a row. That rule doesn't apply on chat, I will fire off 17 lines in a row, I will tell fucking novels, because I treat it more like us hanging out than I do me pursuing you.
I also don't feel the need to always respond to a chat, yet if you don't respond to a text you're SUCH A DICK. THese worlds play by different rules and when you mash them up, it confuses me. Sure, maybe it's easy for you to have a fluid account of our entire correspondence but I didn't agree to this shit.
-Proprietary work communicator/office communicator…dummies
This is going to shock you, but one time when I still had a corporate job in Chicago, I hooked up with a coworker. Sometimes when I was bored I would say things to her on out OCS like 'hey want to do a bunch of X at a Deadmau5 concert tonight?' Or 'Can i have a bj in the copy room really quick please?'
Now at the time I think twice about whether an IT guy was monitoring all of this. But the day HR sat me down and read over 200 passages from this blog to me and then basically said 'Plato o plomo' I knew that they had probably seen those chats.
Do not have sex with coworkers. Do not do drugs. If you are going to do either (or both!) don't talk about it on work software!
-Slack…the new champion
When I was 15, I fixed up an old Windows 95 laptop and snuck out to the electronics store to buy a 40 foot phone cord. Every night I would wait up until midnight when everyone was asleep, run the 56k phone line from my room to the office, and log online. I built a crazy silencing system (essentially four pillows smothering the modem) so no one could hear me log on. I would then spend 3 hours talking to this chick from New Palestine, IN and we would talk about secretly meeting up and getting to second base. It was about the most thrilling thing in my life.
Then I discovered Slack….and holy shit is it cool. Slack is just a great place to hang out with friends, make fun of each other, drop silly gifs and obviously program the SlackBot to talk shit about everyone. It's A+ time waster.
Seriously, in my slack the other day we got into a heated discussion on what is the proper way of rating girls.
(Area code system…0-9 for body, 0-9 for face, and 0 or 1 for yes or no…a good number would be like 881)
or
(job interview scale…hard pass, soft pass, soft yes, hard yes…obviously a soft pass can turn into a soft yes with enough alcohol. Comments like that are why people think rape culture exists.)
Slack makes me feel cool, it makes me feel ahead of the curve. Start ups use slack! I bet most Apple users are on it.
So there we got, I crown thee Slack champion of the daytime communicator software, the place where I can countdown the seconds until the /giphy weekend!
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