Do you chat?

[Reeka]

Originally posted by Kakero: I used to go IRC or ICQ. but I don't use it anymore because I find it very boring and I also hate it when males pose as females. However, I found that talking to someone face to face is much more fun. especially if you are talking to girls.

I may naive, but do people do that alot?

[Kakero]

Originally posted by Reeka: quote: Originally posted by Kakero: I used to go IRC or ICQ. but I don't use it anymore because I find it very boring and I also hate it when males pose as females. However, I found that talking to someone face to face is much more fun. especially if you are talking to girls.

I may naive, but do people do that alot? [/QUOTE]The male pose as female thing? ya, a lot.

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by WOLFGIR: Use mostly MSN nowadays. Used to have MSN, Yahoo and Trillian and ICQ. Got bored with trying to keep track on all the darn programs so I uninstalled the ones that gave me alot of spam mesages and crap, and kept the one that most of the people I chatted to at that time (MSN). I chat alot I guess, mostly with few people though. Don't like the multi big chats. Tends to get outta control to easily.

Gotta agree here, those multiperson chats almost always seemed to get bizarre or gross or downright insulting whenever I got yanked into one. Half the time you couldn't keep up with who was saying what to whom! So these days I tend to be a bit more selective about chats!

I have aim, yahoo and msn installed, but as I said before, I don't chat alot these days. Partly it's a time issue since I'm not online as much as I used to be, so I have to budget my time for everything I do when I am online (including checking places I mod and keeping up my own site or playing multiplay BG2 etc) and partly it's the desire to avoid chats that end up as Wolfie or Johnny described them! Johnny, sounds like you've been in some bad ones out there! [img]smile.gif[/img]

I agree, the one-on-one or just a few friends chats are usually the best.

I used to join multiperson voice chats (as well as the usual typed chats) but found they almost always ended up with nobody talking, or one person trying to use it as a pick up zone. One chat I used to try usually ended up with a few women doing nothing but giggle and say 'oh baby' alot, while another kept offering to do 'favors' for the male participants or just weird/silly stuff like one guy who kept repeating the same stupid phrase about booze over and over, no matter what anyone said to him! I started to wonder if he could hear/see the rest of the chat at all! LOL Needless to say, I stopped bothering with it after a few tries.

That's not to say there might not be good 'big multi chats' out there, of course, but they seem to be few and far between.

On the topic of what do we use, does anyone really still use ICQ? I haven't in more than a year because I found MSN and the others to be easier to use.

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by Mouse: I used to use MSN a fair bit, but like Genieboy, RL has cut down on my online time. However, I'm going to set up a webcam link for my parents so they can keep in touch with my brother, sister-in-law and neice when they move to Baku shortly. Just out of interest, does anyone have tips for the best setup e.g. MSN -v- Netmeeting etc?

I don't know how it is in your area, but I absolutely stand by MSN for voice chatting! I had to use it to communicate with Nachtrafe for a year before he moved here and I have to say it's hands down the winner over Yahoo for quality of sound and similarity to a phone conversation. Yahoo works on the 'voice activated' system and cuts off the speaker if someone else speaks, sometimes making it difficult to make out whole sentences from the person(s) you're talking with! Nacht refused to use it unless I was absolutely desperate to voicechat and begged! He hated hearing me say "huh? what did you say" over and over! LOL!

That said, I will admit we sometimes use it for my multiplayer games as MSN doesn't facilitate multiple person voice sessions.

Now, I know MicroShaft has various 'zones' for MSN so I can't vouch for your area, but if it's an option, you might try it! I couldn't get Aim to function in voice chat but I know some people who say it's pretty good.

[cazzie]

I have trillian but mainly use irc and msn, dont really go into chat rooms ne more

[Bardan the Slayer]

Originally posted by Cloudbringer: I used to join multiperson voice chats (as well as the usual typed chats) but found they almost always ended up with nobody talking, or one person trying to use it as a pick up zone. One chat I used to try usually ended up with a few women doing nothing but giggle and say 'oh baby' alot, while another kept offering to do 'favors' for the male participants or just weird/silly stuff like one guy who kept repeating the same stupid phrase about booze over and over, no matter what anyone said to him! I started to wonder if he could hear/see the rest of the chat at all! LOL Needless to say, I stopped bothering with it after a few tries.

LOL! I remember those chats, Cloudy. It's true that there was alot of discussion of booze and "Oh, baby!" (and the only reason Ms Oh Baby! said it so much was because it sounded funny as hell and we all loved having a laugh about it), but the truth is that the majority of people in those chats had a fantastic time. Actually, it was because people remembered what fun they had in there that they convinced us to start up our monthly gathering.

It's probably true that the chats weren't exactly your cup of tea because we occasionally discussed ... erm ... adult topics in rather frank detail (there are a bunch of us with no shame ), and I know that you didn't really feel comfortable in a chat where people were talking about topics in such a manner. Actually, I seem to remember you leaving once because my language got a bit ... colourful

Part of the reason so many people enjoyed it was because of the silly stuff that went in there. We were a bunch of friends who decided to unwind by generally just being weird in a chatroom, without feeling like we had to abide by the 'laws of seriousness' that some forums enforce. We were all adults, and used the chatroom as a place to talk to each other without having to watch our words in case young eyes were a-reading [img]smile.gif[/img] It was silly, but judging by the number of people who still laugh about some of the stuff that went on in there, it was lots of fun if you were the type of person to enjoy it [img]smile.gif[/img] Some people may not have found it enjoyable, but nothing is going to be to everybody's tastes [img]smile.gif[/img]

Oh, and I also have to go with Yahoo. MSN sound quality is and always has been for me dull and flat, and the webcam options never work properly. The yahoo voice quality has always been exceptionally crisp and clear. Me and Reeka have had to use a voicechat program to stay in contact for two years (trumps your 1, Cloudy ), and I wouldn't know what we would do without it. Maybe it's region dependent or something, but Yahoo is a hands down winner over MSN in my book. Add too that it very rarely suffers form any of the 'cannot connect' problems that MSN has been famous for in the past, and it's no contest.

Still, I guess you have to find whatever works for you - like I said, perhaps different people on different ISP's get different results from different programs [img]smile.gif[/img] Still, I can only offer my own experience, which is that yahoo rules [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Cloudbringer]

Goodness, Bardan, your memory must be better than mine, as I only remember two chats that you were in when I joined them! Besides, those 'no shame yahoo' chats you refered to aren't the only ones out there and like johnny, I was less than impressed with the others I checked out as well.

Actually, Bardan, I have no problem with 'adult topics in rather frank detail'and frequently have fun/silly innuendo or 'frank chats' as you put it, with friends and fiance. So, nope, the problem's not there. OK, to be perfectly blunt, what I found to be my biggest problem with those chats I entered back then was boredom! Sheer unadulterated boredom! [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img] LOL

The 'adult' topic seemed to be the ONLY one on the chat when I was there(other than the repetetive booze comment!) and the few times I went the whole 'topic' seemed to be 2 or three women, who were constantly offering oral sex or other favors to one or another of the male participants, which, yup, I admit, wasn't of much interest to me! ROTFL! [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img] Now, uh...maybe you're right, that's not my cup of tea at all! [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img] but then, I had a few friends who tried the chat at my insistence who said the same thing. Three different people who had pretty much the same reaction, so I guess you're right, it's just not for everyone.

I suppose it's all a matter of taste. No offense intended, Bardan. I just didn't have much fun on those chats you obviously remember so fondly. But I'm glad you and others had a good time. Vive la difference, dear! I like a good friendly banter as much as the next person and I know how much fun it can be! It's why I created The Oasis, after all.

Oh and as for your language...uh, 'colorful' doesn't quite begin to describe it that day.


As for the yahoo/msn thing, I have had consistent luck with the sound quality in MSN and lousy times on yahoo, so I think it really is a matter of what connections and local setups one has, because I had heard from Reeka that you two have had great luck with yahoo. Awww, two years... wow, long time for voicechats! I bet you can debug yahoo blindfolded now! Um, I think I'll let you keep the trump on that one (2 yrs) , since Nacht moved out here after our first year of im chats. I didn't like having to depend on im programs for my contact the first year, so I'm just as glad it was ONLY one year!

The other chats (not yahoo ones, btw) I refered to were just bad. Several degenerated into people namecalling participants and one day I had been hauled into a multiperson chat that I fairly quickly bugged out of when women and Christians became the topic of insult de jour. Reading the denigrating comments in a chat box wasn't my idea of fun, either. One on one, most of those people had been pretty decent but in a big group it got out of hand, as Wolfie described.

[ 08-25-2003, 12:16 AM: Message edited by: Cloudbringer ]

[Ladyzekke]

Oh gross. LOL, I wouldn't want to be in any of those kind of multichats either! Aiyyyeee!

I use MSN mostly, and my personal experience with the few multichats weren't anywhere near that LOL, but it was insane trying to keep up, the words just keep scrolling, hard to get in any reply in a correct order, if there ever was any order to the conversation (I could never tell it scrolled up so much, and if I'd try to scroll up to read something, the second another person replied it popped me back to the bottom)!

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by ladyzekke: Oh gross. LOL, I wouldn't want to be in any of those kind of multichats either! Aiyyyeee! I use MSN mostly, and my personal experience with the few multichats weren't anywhere near that LOL, but it was insane trying to keep up, the words just keep scrolling, hard to get in any reply in a correct order, if there ever was any order to the conversation (I could never tell it scrolled up so much, and if I'd try to scroll up to read something, the second another person replied it popped me back to the bottom)!

Yup! that can be a big problem when you have many people in those chats. Sometimes it's easier to just 'go with the flow' and you do end up missing some of the conversation as it flies by! I remember sometimes I would see 10 comments go by and I'd catch about 3 of them before I figured out who was who in the chat! HAHA!

I didn't stay long if all they were was bathroom jokes or such, but some were fun, if confusing!