Chatrooms and IMing
3 Nov 2025 06:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evereve AOL Instant Messenger was officially nixed in 2017, though the decline in usage began long before that. Notably with the adoption of MSN Messenger, which sucked, which lead into Skype and it's clones, which sucked worse, all really began the splintering of the population of instant messaging. Text messaging, a cellphone's equivalent, also became popular. People talking online with strangers via anonymous handles in real time with low stakes and complete freedom, declined. Fast forward to the mid 2020's, specifically 2023-2024, and fakesmart chatbots are now becoming popular because nobody has anybody to chat with, with low stakes like they did 10+ years ago. There is a societal starvation for that appetite which was created and then the rug was pulled away. Now it is being fed back to people as a lesser perverted scummy version.
In the same way that your cellphone number is tied to your identiy, so too are all modern "social media" profiles. Normalcools don't have an anonymous outlet, they are limited to the IRL identity-focused "social media" landscape, and may not even know the origins of it with services like BBSes, IRC, and IMing. With the death of "fast food IMing + camming" like Stickam and Omegle, the only remaining spirit of that 90's 00's era free conversation is in imageboards and message boards, which have resisted the monopolized censored hellscapes of "everything and the kitchen sink" aggregators.
This entropy, degredation, and exploitation applies across all things; and in this case, online services. Metal to plastic. Programs, to apps. Lifetime guarantee famils heirlooms to disposables. Desktops to laptops to "smartphones". AA batteries to non-removable proprietary rechargeable. Etc.
In the same way that your cellphone number is tied to your identiy, so too are all modern "social media" profiles. Normalcools don't have an anonymous outlet, they are limited to the IRL identity-focused "social media" landscape, and may not even know the origins of it with services like BBSes, IRC, and IMing. With the death of "fast food IMing + camming" like Stickam and Omegle, the only remaining spirit of that 90's 00's era free conversation is in imageboards and message boards, which have resisted the monopolized censored hellscapes of "everything and the kitchen sink" aggregators.
This entropy, degredation, and exploitation applies across all things; and in this case, online services. Metal to plastic. Programs, to apps. Lifetime guarantee famils heirlooms to disposables. Desktops to laptops to "smartphones". AA batteries to non-removable proprietary rechargeable. Etc.
