Our love letter to Internet Relay Chat [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UbKenFipjo

by zdw • 11 months ago

117 69 11 months ago

davidw• 11 months ago

I remember logging in to IRC from the University of Oregon where I was taking an Italian class. I saw there was an #italy channel and it was full of people who were actually in Italy, which I found kind of mind boggling. This was 1993, when 'long distance calls' were still a thing, and I was talking directly with people on the other side of the world for free.

I met a lot of cool people on IRC like antirez, and interacted with some random ones like the woman who is now the prime minister of Italy ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020105230808/http://www.geocit... )

Mistletoe• 11 months ago

I wish our government officials even knew what IRC was, much less had used it. I get the impression 95% of Congress has a Yahoo email address.

vwcx• 11 months ago

Watch out - in some circles, it's cool again to be using Yahoo Mail...

lkramer• 11 months ago

Oh wow, I have been hanging out on Undernet since mid 90s, but primarily on #tolkien and #lotr, but looking at her profile it's not impossible she would have popped in there as well...

weinzierl• 11 months ago

Speaking of source code from 1998, the first IRC client I used was mIRC because it was installed in my Uni's CIP pool. First released in 1995 it is still alive and gets regular updates.

https://www.mirc.com/

gryzzly• 11 months ago

There is a Slack alternative with image / video embeds/uploads based on and fully compatible with IRC – IRCCloud, which is founded and built by early Last.FM team. – https://www.irccloud.com

I worked on the client for a couple of months back in 2015, added a quick "channel switcher" – it was a fun project where I learned about fuzzy matching and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_metric and looked at how most editors did their "Search project files" commands.

kogasa240p4• 11 months ago

irccloud

Very interesting, reminds me of the Movim client for XMPP.

timonoko• 11 months ago

I sometimes tried to irc for 24 hours straight, but always fell asleep. I was following #sci.nanotech and always testing how long can I go spewing nonsense before real experts, like David Deutsch, realize I am full of shit. Though I did discover a minor issue in Diamond Age Book because of this faux expertise.

thom• 11 months ago

Shout to anyone whose parents took away their modem cable after an IRC-induced £300 monthly phone bill.

BurritoKing• 11 months ago

I remember sneaking into their room after they fell asleep to steal the phone extension cable back to reconnect so I could stay up all night talking to Americans! The first time they got one of those massive phone bills I was in SO much trouble.

Eventually, in like '97 or so, my father wound down the ISP he was running and got a 128k leased line into our house (which was basically unheard of). I came home from school and discovered a cable running across the landing and into my bedroom, and quickly figured out I had a permanent 24/7 connection. I don't think I left the keyboard for the entire weekend :D

encrypted_bird• 10 months ago

People were their own ISP back then?

anakaine3• 11 months ago

They took away the mouse, then the keyboard, and eventually the modem. It wasn't about cost - it was the equivalent of taking away the PS5 controller when you have a younger teenager being disrespectful.

I wound up with backups, and eventually my own PC.

qingcharles• 11 months ago

Are you me?

(were you on #gb back in the day?)

kogasa240p4• 11 months ago

Honestly it's a shame that IRC is only a thing for tech circles and that IRCv3 never took off (at least currently, libera.chat still doesn't have the /history command).

capitainenemo• 11 months ago

IRCv3 is being incrementally adopted, even if it is a bit slow. I think in the case of the /history command, Libera had some concerns about implementation and what channels would prefer not to have a history. ... and actually, checking the spec matrix, chathistory is still a draft.

But Libera does have some other IRCv3 features enabled.

https://ircv3.net/support/networks

There's also a #ircv3 on Libera with implementation discussion

kogasa240p4• 11 months ago

I see, good to see that it's getting implemented slowly at least.

/chathistory is still a draft

Did not know that, only reason I asked was that some other server already implemented it (think it was the last 100 posts but it's been a while since then).

kurisufag• 11 months ago

HISTSERV blows. keep chats ephemeral.

anthk2• 11 months ago

Jabber works.

kogasa240p4• 11 months ago

Probably the best protocol currently, it has modern features, has encryption (OMEMO), and isn't bloated like matrix is.

Toorkit• 11 months ago

I asked some really stupid questions on IRC when I first heard of this "Linux" thing as a kid. Good times!

th0ma5• 11 months ago

I remember one of the first random people I interacted with on IRC who was also at a university lab pirating software getting so mad at me that I didn't tell them they could download many things simultaneously from IRC bots and I had only recently found out myself that afternoon.

blindriver• 11 months ago

My roommate in the 90s was big into IRC in the mid to late 90s. The number of girls he hooked up with from IRC over that time was jaw dropping. It was the first way people from around the country or the world could reliable chat with each other and it was hugely successful.

pieterhg• 11 months ago

You can see how mIRC looked and use it on my site https://pieter.com on a working IRC server with a working dial up connection with Winsock and a real ISP made by @bai0

Also has Hacker News in Gopher!

mezod3• 11 months ago

IRC is the epitome of the internet. Only downhill from those times. :/

antupis• 11 months ago

Some discord/slack spaces have kinda same feel.

grg03• 11 months ago

Those are centralized and apparently the former at least now requires phone verification. Not even close.

grg03• 11 months ago

I think to anyone who has used it, it is plain testament that social networks do not scale. This is a social limitation, not a technical one. What killed the Internet is the centralization of platforms compounded by the commercial interest to "engage" on behalf of both corporations and users. IRC worked because it was decentralized and had no commercial interest, nor did it cater to narcissistic tendencies. No interest to comment for points, and decentralized enforcement where you'd fuck around and simply get banned from the(that) server.

matheusmoreira• 11 months ago

I once read an article about forum quality as a function of the number of users. I can't seem to find it anymore, sadly.

The core idea is there's an optimal number of people. Not enough people and the community dies: not enough activity and ideas to sustain it. Too many and it also dies: it becomes impossible to form social relationships, cooperation dies down, everything becomes meaningless because you don't know anyone, the probability of ever interacting with any given person ever again trends toward zero.

Made a lot of sense to me.

cobertos• 11 months ago

I had a _really_ in-depth conversation with a friend with multiple interesting lines of thought going at once that only worked because the chat we were using had a per-message reply feature. The conversation would not have been as meaningful to me otherwise. I'm not sure IRC could have supported a chat like that...

(admittedly I haven't tried anything other than a few basic IRC chats, never really getting deep into IRCv3 or new features and stuff)

azertify• 11 months ago

I can appreciate that per message replies are handy in modern messages. But if you were having _such_ an in-depth conversation at the peak of IRC, you may have moved to email to make it async and allow for more fully thought-out replies.

Email is still a great way to communicate with people today.

opan2• 11 months ago

In IRC you'd just paste the relevant message or part of a message you're replying to after a greater than sign and then post your thought in the following message. Works totally fine. I have used IRC, XMPP, and Matrix to chat with some of the same close friends, I don't find actual replies to be necessary, and I think they kinda disrupt the flow when used too much.

tkfoss3• 11 months ago

IRC is still there, we just have less time and new kids have new places to talk.

mezod3• 11 months ago

yeh, but not really... just channels with idlers and bncs

dopp0• 11 months ago

I have fond memories of scripting for mIRC, it was one of my first dev languages, together with clipper and delphi/pascal.

codespin• 11 months ago

mIRC scripting is what got me into programming. The summer I found it as a kid I was immediately hooked, being able to write code that actually interacted with the world and did something blew my mind. I was so into the 'war channels' where everyone would kick each other and optimization was key.

getpokedagain• 11 months ago

Wow same. This was my intro as well and I'm glad to not be the only.

momocowcow• 11 months ago

Why are we now using Discord instead of this? I never had performance issues with text based irc clients.

magackame2• 11 months ago

To be fair you could implement a Discord client that doesn't suck performance wise. A number one feature of modern instant messaging is message history. For productivity and even personal groups usecases people usually don't want ephemeral chats.

sltkr• 11 months ago

Could you actually? Is it an open protocol? Does Discord have an explicit policy of allowing third-party clients to access their serves?

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 11 months ago

Because Discord has put a lot of money into planting free grass and then building a fence around the sheep.

See also Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Reddit, etc. It's profitable and it always works.

varjag• 11 months ago

It is hard to overstate how influential IRC have been in my life. I met my best friend on IRC in 1999. He found his wife on IRC a few years later.

We followed the towers collapse on 9/11 over IRC in a blizzard of all-caps screams and links to TV screenshots and RealVideo clips. It was hours before the government of my country had lifted the embargo on the media to report it. I called my friends and family and everyone was just incredulous, it sounded like a dumb thriller plot.

I got a job offer and moved countries via IRC, then again a few years later. We watched people join, age and disappear. One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts; its topic had been set by a man who had passed away.

Cu3PO42• 11 months ago

One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts;

This hits hard. I might be one of those ghosts. When I last checked in, I saw the same in virtually all the channels that were once important to me. My bouncer is still running, I suppose I'm not quite ready to let go yet.

rendx• 11 months ago

One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts

I remember the collective obituary moment when somebody's bouncer quit for good, almost two years after the person's passing.

anakaine3• 11 months ago

You just brought back a core memory. Mass netsplits followed by a few minutes of "wtf", and then some new yorkers who had bouncers not routing through the WTC jumping on channel to let us know what was going on.

I was, and still am, on the other side of the world and lost a few people I talked to every day during that event.

vaylian• 11 months ago

What are some IRC communities in 2025 that you can recommend?

opan2• 11 months ago

One problem when people ask this is that my favorite channels are mode +s (secret, not on the public list or revealed when you whois someone and see what channels they're in) with a dozen or fewer active participants (but often 20-50 total members or more) and inviting new people would risk killing the vibe we have going in there. I found these channels basically by word of mouth or friends of friends. While it might sound like gatekeeping, I think everyone should probably find their own way, based on their interests and network. I will say I tend to hang out on Rizon, though.

I do also idle in a lot of the tech channels in Libera, but that's not where I spend most of my time chatting, I'm basically just in those for tech support. I like to already be in the ones for the programs/distros I use so I can read the last bit of conversation before (and after) posting. Both in case someone else had my problem recently, and because it gives me something to do while I wait, like reading a magazine in a lobby. Sometimes the tech support even goes both ways and I'll chime in on an old convo if I think I can help someone.

If an IRC channel gets too busy it'll be hard to have conversations in also, like the madness you see in Twitch chats with the text scrolling by rapidly.

justusthane• 11 months ago

I’ve found the IRCs hosted by tilde servers to be quite good. See https://tilde.chat/ and https://tildeverse.org/. I’m a member of https://ctrl-c.club (although I haven’t been active for several years).

INTPenis• 11 months ago

Been on IRC since the 90s and had soooo much fun. Still there but it's just a tiny private channel with IRL friends.

We're old and dying. :(

photios• 11 months ago

IRC is what brought me to Linux in the 90's and started my programmer career. And it was for the stupidest reason - WinNuke!

It was trivial to BSOD a remote Windows box, and Linux made you immune to that!

mk_stjames• 11 months ago

I think it was Efnet #warez channel that pointed me towards the right places to learn some software in high school, and that wound up getting me so far ahead working with CAD that it undoubtedly was the reason I got a full ride scholarship to an engineering university that I never would have be able to afford tuition to otherwise.

A random guy on another channel heard about how I was struggling to run certain things because my family couldn't afford anything newer than an old 486 with 8MB of RAM, on a motherboard that didn't support any modern graphics cards and at that point was barely able to run Windows. This person, whom I didn't know other than just a screen name and chatting about Paintball, just straight up sent me an entire motherboard, RAM, and CPU combo in the mail; A relatively new at the time AMD Athlon, on a motherboard with an AGP slot, so I could finally get a modern 3D graphics accelerator. Nothing asked in return, just 'here ya go kid, make good use of it'.

These two events when put together essentially changed the course of my life more than almost anything else, and both happened on IRC.

anakaine3• 11 months ago

My early software and skills life happened around some late stages of BBS and IRC, and yes, #warez.

I met some absolutely wonderful people from online, and even got to spend some quality time with some very high end hardware that couldn't be gifted, but was effectively almost unlimited, and people with appropriate skills and compassion to match. My early career and schooling made no use of those skills, but once I found my jam a little later on that knowledge still proved to be incredibly important and put me leaps and bounds ahead of my peers, and it's been an amazing ride ever since.

tkfoss3• 11 months ago

My dad acquired a dozen identical PCs from decommissioned office equipment at his workplace (very old machines slated for disposal). As a kid in a rural area, I had neither the money nor the means to obtain the necessary router to build the Beowulf cluster I'd been mentioning on a random IRC channel. Then, one day, a quiet "greybeard" who mostly lurked in the logs pinged me out of blue, asked for my address, and sent me his old 5-port router from Germany. This felt incredibly significant because even people who had interacted with him online for over a decade knew nothing beyond his screen name, yet here I was, holding a box with his full name and address.

This gesture, combined with the philosophy and work ethic of him and other greybeards that I deeply admired, literally changed the course of my life. By the time I reached high school, I already had an impressive portfolio of hardware and software projects, spoke fluent English, and was freelancing for amounts that exceeded my father's salary. IRC turned out to be an incredible ROI for me :p

pcdoodle• 11 months ago

Wow, that must have blown your hair back quite a bit! Thanks for sharing the story. I had a similar upgrade path and that was such a huge leap forward.

geoffbp• 11 months ago

BitchX anyone? I remember self teaching Linux and Slackware.

Idling on irc in some xdcc warez channel - waiting 24 hours or sth for some download to complete.. those were the days

zkmon• 11 months ago

Oh, the good old days!. First IRC and then yahoo chat (asl?). Though I doubt if there were millions of users for IRC in the 80's, as the youtuber claims. I thought, maybe thousands.

Nux• 11 months ago

Through IRC in Internet cafes I discovered Linux/unix and also met my wife.

Cheers IRC! I'm still connected to this day, albeit Liberachat, not Undernet.

internet_points• 11 months ago

Got my first job through IRC. Still using it (with weechat as my bouncer and weechat-android), though I see a lot of [m] suffixes these days on other users.

dharma1• 11 months ago

Mid 90s efnet #philosophy was great. And undernet too

tkfoss3• 11 months ago

I actually "made money" on IRC by accidentally forgetting some dogecoin from tipping bots and discovering it last year. If I didn't tip back, back then, those few hundreds would be few tens of thousands now hh

commandersaki• 11 months ago

Best description of IRC I've come across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ

thegagne• 11 months ago

I organized #mst3k for a while and we collected pretty much all of the existing episodes. Good times.

zduoduo• 11 months ago

This video’s so good at talking about IRC’s history—like, from when it started as a student project in 1988 to being this early chat tool where no single group controlled it. It explains all the important stuff too—those big splits, how it changed people’s online lives—and now I finally get why IRC was such a big deal back then!

Honestly, I don’t think IRC’s decline is a failure at all. It basically made way for apps like Discord, right? And its simple, user-run feel still feels more real than all the flashy platforms we have now.

Ever used IRC back in the day? Or do you think modern tools lost that special charm IRC had?

cainxinth• 11 months ago

I had to repeat my first semester of college partially because of IRC. The bigger story was that I was a sheltered kid not prepared for the freedom of college, but the specifics were that I was already a budding internet junkie who had been stuck with a 56K modem and strict parents who limited my computer use, and suddenly I had 24/7 access to broadband. I was up all night trading files on IRC.

thegrim33• 11 months ago

Another thing about IRC is that the protocol is simple and easy to understand. You can write your own IRC client, or IRC server, it's not difficult. It's not closed down / proprietary like Discord. It's not "open" but insanely complicated like the modern web. You just need a copy of the RFC and after writing some basic socket code can very quickly have a basic client up and running. I always appreciated that.

Our love letter to Internet Relay Chat [video]

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