My first experience with chat

narrative written in 2004 about a personal experience

Chat! Wow! Everyone’s talking about chat. Now I am going to be part of a chat. Its going to be great! This is the information superhighway’s answer to the telephone. I'll be able to use this to speak to others in far-flung reaches of the globe.

These were the thoughts racing through my mind when I was invited to take part in my first chat session. Little did I know how different reality was going to be.

The first hurdle to overcome was setting up a time when everyone would be available for a chat. You can’t just sit down on the computer and chat. Well, not unless you are using a commercial chatroom. You need to have others to chat with. OK, this makes perfect sense. It is just like setting up a meeting or a teleconference. You need to organise well in advance. Right, so we are organised.

Now the time has come for the chat.

Where are my login instructions?

I can’t find my password!

They’re going to start without me!

OK, just in the nick of time. Well I’m here, where is everyone else?

Now I discover that I needn’t have panicked.

Everyone arrives over the next five minutes.

In the meantime, I talk to the moderator. As the others log in, their names appear on the screen as "X has entered the room". Well we’re all here.

Now what!

Hey, I didn’t know that this was a typing competition. I can’t type fast enough!

What happened to the rest of my message?

How did they make their type pink?

Where did that smiley face come from?

How come their type is so large?

What do those letters mean?

Where is my last message?

Hey, I can’t follow this. I don’t know who I am supposed to answer. Hey, I just said that! What’s going on here?

I soon discovered that chat was nothing like I had anticipated.

It was fast moving with everyone contributing something that started another branch of the conversation. In everyday life I am used to listening and replying. How was I supposed to do this with so many different replies needed? This is a whole new ball park. I don’t know the rules.

Chat is aptly named. There was no deep and meaningful conversation going on here. Statements had to be short—255 characters and that’s it. Anything more and it gets cut off. That isn't much.

We were chatting—not discussing. Well there you are.

If I had stopped to think about the name I would have had my first clue as to what to expect.

If you are slow at typing, by the time you complete your message, the rest of the conversation will have moved on from your point.

I started to send my messages a phrase or sentence at a time. That way I looked like I was still contributing. It didn’t help greatly with idea development though.

To even find the statement I was answering meant moving back down below what could be seen on the computer screen window. This also meant manually pulling the scroll button down since the scroll arrow doesn’t work (at least on Macs).

That of course took time to figure out and the message I was seeking crept further down the page.

That also brings up the fact that you read the messages from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Each new posting arrives on top of the previous ones. That is why my message kept moving down the page. But you only answer once you have read to the top.

What a funny world chat is!

You also don’t know when silence exists (no new messages), whether everyone is furiously typing at the same time or whether there really is a lull in the conversation.

It could also be that you have problems with your connection and when you hit the refresh button all of a sudden a flow of messages appear leaving you frantically reading to catch up.

But back to the silence.

In everyday conversations, you fill the silence or say your goodbyes. So I felt obligated to fill the gap.

All of a sudden a number of gap fillers appear and the frantic pace beings anew.

When is there time for thinking about the new ideas?

My visions of chat being the modern solution to distance have now vanished.

Actually, I don’t think I like chat.

I guess it has a role, but I will have to think about what that role is.