John Brown’s body likes a-mouldering in the grave.
10:16 p.m.
When I first started here, what seems like an age ago now, the chatroom was a hopping place. You could log in there anytime, day or night, and there would be people there. During the afternoon I chatted with Europeans and Brits, at night there were visitors from my own and nearby time zones. On those occasions when I managed to stay up late enough, I spoke to people on the west coast, and Pacific Ocean denizens would pop in at any hour.
There was a crowd of regulars who all knew each other. They quickly accepted me into their midst, made me the “mother of the chat” after a fashion, although I never felt discriminated against for my age. I was told that when I was online, people behaved themselves better, spoke better English and swore less. In fact, there were several of us who ridiculed those who used 1337-speak (that internet jargon called “leet speak”, the leet a short form again for elite) and refused to answer asl (age/sex/location). In fact, when a newbie entered the room and typed in asl, I got into the habit of saying, “I’m sorry, this is an asl-free zone.” Ah, good times.
This is not to say that we didn’t have our share of perverts and assholes. There was one asshole in particular who made my blood pressure rise every time he appeared. I berated myself for letting him get under my skin, but he was adept at pushing buttons. There was also the child molester who returned repeatedly with different screen names. I never had a problem with him and he was always very polite to me. But then, I’m not a child, and he knew it. The rest of us warned all the 13-year-old girls to watch out for him, however. There were the noob-flamers, those people who delighted in attacking newbies, especially the teeny-bopper variety. I made some really good friends there, people who are now friends in my offline life as well.
But, alas, the chatroom fell on hard times. Through lack of maintenance, it was down more than it was up for a while, and in that hiatus many of the regulars found other ways to amuse themselves. When it finally became operational again, after months of dysfunction, hardly anyone returned. There were a couple of diehards like myself who showed up a few evenings a week looking for conversation, but mostly newbies wandered in, found it to be rather dead and boring, and wandered out again.
A few nights ago I tried logging in and found it to be non-operational. I used to bug Andrew in the past to fix it, but now I wonder if it is worth it. This place seems to be dying a slow death, and perhaps it is better to just leave it alone, let it go, take it off life support. It saddens me. But all things pass eventually. Why shouldn’t this place be one of them?
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