Internet Relay Chat
-designed to make chatting as discouraging as possible for the
casual user. Its windows95 style interface and text-only format on black or white backgrounds make it feel lifeless and dull. When one first opens IRC, one can only stare into
the blank black screen; there is no welcome window and no cute little sound to tell you your friends are on. All this, designed with the intention
of keeping out: da n00bzours.
Lonely men and women sit
in silence before their computers at night, staring maniacally as pages of text
scrolls before their eyes. The phrases and gestures, pleading and begging for attention, only hint at life, but this is almost forgotten as you bark off a laugh after a good exchange. But as the jokes and laughter
subside you realize you are sitting alone in your underwear at 3am, laughing in the dark. This is the state of being that is; IRC.