My acquaintance with chatting started in early 2000 in Delhi as internet addiction was starting to take pace in the minds of the young boys coming from small town to big cities like Delhi or any other metros. My ex room mate was a frequent chatter then and I too eventually got the bug myself.
Earlier in my Delhi University days, college time was just 4-5 hours then I had nothing else to do. Delhi was the new found freedom and I tend to exploit myself in eating.. but how much can anyone eat so much as things were starting to get boring. Same South Ex (where I used to live), same Bengali Sweets.
My ex room mate used to visit this ulta modern cyber cafe in front of Bengali Sweets named Hub. It used to have a huge infrastructure and offered membership cards. Also if the members were frequent, they also gift those members.. as for me I got a wrist watch. Imagine.. I got a gift from a cyber cafe for being so frequent. So, back to my story, I gradually increased my frequency of visiting to cyber cafe as I was bored sleeping, eating out and movies watching was not a frequent time pass to me.
Once while I was there checking out my Hotmail account, I saw my ex room mate chatting at mIRC. Now mIRC is a chatting application which connects to you the various chatting servers. These servers were home to many other similar chatters who used to create chat rooms and also there were network administrators, admins etc to manage the users as well as the server. My roomie used to chat in the DALnet servers.DALnet server was a hub to many assamese chatters and served as a virtual home outside real home.The mIRC interface was not a interactive and crisp as Yahoo Chat rooms. mIRC was more like a command based DOS type environment. I forgot to mention, at that time I used to chat with my friends in Yahoo Chat and the newly launched Rediff Chat. Rediff Chat was very dull and used to hang so I moved to Yahoo chat.
Now we assamese have a peculiar tendency. When we're outside home we tend to believe that no one else is more assamese than I am. This results in looking down on fellow assamese and also ego clashes. Now when I came to know that mIRC is a hub of assamese people I took interest in that platform. But creating Id was not that easy. There's a Nick Server who manages the Nick Names and Channel Server which manages the Channels or rooms. So once I joined the DALnet server, after being guided by my ex room mate) I got hooked to it. I was soon a part of the hub which connects to assamese globally. In mIRC rooms were mentioned to as channels and has a hash tag in front of the name. So #Assam was a channel were we would flock into.
Now in mIRC, a channel is managed by 3 level administrators: Level 1 is the Founder, Level 2 the Super Operators and Level 3 the Auto Operators. The operators used to have a @ sign in front of their nicks. So the Founder can assign Sop & Aop and Sop can assign Aop. The more someone is frequent the more are the chances to getting a operator status. The deal sounds not so enticing at first but the powers of operators make it more tempting. Operators can kick, ban (permanent or temporary) and in other words, rule the whole channel. #Assam too was under such wrath. Why I say wrath, there's a reason. Chatters are not always well behaved or descent. They fight frequently, misbehave, swear to each other and the operators (who acts as a policeman) tend to kick, ban them. If a user is good with an operator, then he might play politics in the channel and keep his enemies out. Now this was power play and tempting to the other chatters.
To come to the basics, chatters are basically lonely fellows. They chat to come over their loneliness while making friends virtually and who won't judge them through their physical appearance or verbal communication. Here all once does is type. These chatters make chatting as their habit and eventually they ruin their social lives by letting the virtual environment rule their lives. A common problem with a chatter is "Mood Swings". If he has a bad day in chatting this might reflect in his real life as well. Since one cannot see the other chatter so it's nearly impossible to judge the mood of that other chatter. It's just that the smilies denote their moods ex. :-) means happy and :-( means sad. Now many a times if someone writes something in such a way that the other fellow chatter misunderstands to be rude, then automatically the fellow chatter too feels a bad mood situation. They fight for power, girls etc. Yes even girls and they would date the girls in private chat rooms.
So coming back to my story, as I got hooked up in mid 2000 to chatting and by 2001 mid I started to spend around 6 hours daily. I shifted to South Ex part II and there too I had made a monthly account. But side by side I was also leaning html codes online and made my first profile page of around 8 to 10 pages and hosted on the free Yahoo web hosting services called Geocities then.
Chatting did affected my life socially, financially and mentally. I guess in 2005 I promised myself to end the curse and come back to a serious life. I recommendation, the best cure is format your PC and call up your old friends and meet them. Or better, take up hobbies like reading etc. Chatting is just a habit and it can be cured.
Earlier in my Delhi University days, college time was just 4-5 hours then I had nothing else to do. Delhi was the new found freedom and I tend to exploit myself in eating.. but how much can anyone eat so much as things were starting to get boring. Same South Ex (where I used to live), same Bengali Sweets.
My ex room mate used to visit this ulta modern cyber cafe in front of Bengali Sweets named Hub. It used to have a huge infrastructure and offered membership cards. Also if the members were frequent, they also gift those members.. as for me I got a wrist watch. Imagine.. I got a gift from a cyber cafe for being so frequent. So, back to my story, I gradually increased my frequency of visiting to cyber cafe as I was bored sleeping, eating out and movies watching was not a frequent time pass to me.
Once while I was there checking out my Hotmail account, I saw my ex room mate chatting at mIRC. Now mIRC is a chatting application which connects to you the various chatting servers. These servers were home to many other similar chatters who used to create chat rooms and also there were network administrators, admins etc to manage the users as well as the server. My roomie used to chat in the DALnet servers.DALnet server was a hub to many assamese chatters and served as a virtual home outside real home.The mIRC interface was not a interactive and crisp as Yahoo Chat rooms. mIRC was more like a command based DOS type environment. I forgot to mention, at that time I used to chat with my friends in Yahoo Chat and the newly launched Rediff Chat. Rediff Chat was very dull and used to hang so I moved to Yahoo chat.
Now we assamese have a peculiar tendency. When we're outside home we tend to believe that no one else is more assamese than I am. This results in looking down on fellow assamese and also ego clashes. Now when I came to know that mIRC is a hub of assamese people I took interest in that platform. But creating Id was not that easy. There's a Nick Server who manages the Nick Names and Channel Server which manages the Channels or rooms. So once I joined the DALnet server, after being guided by my ex room mate) I got hooked to it. I was soon a part of the hub which connects to assamese globally. In mIRC rooms were mentioned to as channels and has a hash tag in front of the name. So #Assam was a channel were we would flock into.
Now in mIRC, a channel is managed by 3 level administrators: Level 1 is the Founder, Level 2 the Super Operators and Level 3 the Auto Operators. The operators used to have a @ sign in front of their nicks. So the Founder can assign Sop & Aop and Sop can assign Aop. The more someone is frequent the more are the chances to getting a operator status. The deal sounds not so enticing at first but the powers of operators make it more tempting. Operators can kick, ban (permanent or temporary) and in other words, rule the whole channel. #Assam too was under such wrath. Why I say wrath, there's a reason. Chatters are not always well behaved or descent. They fight frequently, misbehave, swear to each other and the operators (who acts as a policeman) tend to kick, ban them. If a user is good with an operator, then he might play politics in the channel and keep his enemies out. Now this was power play and tempting to the other chatters.
To come to the basics, chatters are basically lonely fellows. They chat to come over their loneliness while making friends virtually and who won't judge them through their physical appearance or verbal communication. Here all once does is type. These chatters make chatting as their habit and eventually they ruin their social lives by letting the virtual environment rule their lives. A common problem with a chatter is "Mood Swings". If he has a bad day in chatting this might reflect in his real life as well. Since one cannot see the other chatter so it's nearly impossible to judge the mood of that other chatter. It's just that the smilies denote their moods ex. :-) means happy and :-( means sad. Now many a times if someone writes something in such a way that the other fellow chatter misunderstands to be rude, then automatically the fellow chatter too feels a bad mood situation. They fight for power, girls etc. Yes even girls and they would date the girls in private chat rooms.
So coming back to my story, as I got hooked up in mid 2000 to chatting and by 2001 mid I started to spend around 6 hours daily. I shifted to South Ex part II and there too I had made a monthly account. But side by side I was also leaning html codes online and made my first profile page of around 8 to 10 pages and hosted on the free Yahoo web hosting services called Geocities then.
Chatting did affected my life socially, financially and mentally. I guess in 2005 I promised myself to end the curse and come back to a serious life. I recommendation, the best cure is format your PC and call up your old friends and meet them. Or better, take up hobbies like reading etc. Chatting is just a habit and it can be cured.
