Chat on Chat
Let's chat about chat. This summer I have spent most of my pathetic little life on the internet. Now while crusin' around and learning seeing and hearing cool stuph is alright, and getting free stuph rocks (I should know), there is nothing quite like human interaction. If you can indeed call it that, but for arguement's sake, I will. So you go to a chat room, or a BBS and you meet some new friends from all over the world, and you send them email and everyone is peachy, right? Well, before you meet me on a chat room, I want to make sure you know what is concidered "bad behvaior".
Pervs: you know who you are... Don't come into a chat room and start posting pornograpic images all around. Besides upsetting some of our more sensitive veiwers, it is impolie to post ANY large image. Many of our computers cannot handle them, and very often it can cause some people to get booted from the room. Other poor behavior related to this catagory are propositioning everyone inthe room. Most of us don't want your dirty mesages, and most of us don't want anything to do with anyone who feels they have to start a conversation with, "Wanna' have cyber sex?" (I've gotten a few far ruder sugestions, but for taste's sake I won't use them.)
Posts: must you share?... This includes posting large images, animated images and using h1 way too much, not closing html tags, and overusing links. If you do any of these things, please don't. If you do these things and I am in the room, watch out.
Punks: gotta start somethin', don't you?... You snots that come in and just start fights... man, are that you that ignored in real life that you have to come into a chat room and argue to get attention?
Now a few tips for those of you who are good citizens. For dealing with any of these? My best sugestion is ignore them. Mostly they want attention, and if you leave them be, they will tire and leave to go bother someone else. Also, if you find you have terrible problems with images, you may want to conciter disconecting them. You can do this in netscape by turning off auto load images, or if you are in a chat room like Geocites you can go to config and take the images out.
Shrinks: are you?... I have found that many of you are all too willing to offer advice to a soul who looks sad, or happens to mention something that you feel is wrong. I have had a great deal with this, in real life, not just on chat. The best advice I have for all of you is
This holds true for several reasons. Such as, very often, you are making things much worse, which is what happened to me and my friends yesterday. One of them happened to mention something not on privacy, and all hell broke loose! It was complete pandamonium! And everyone had advice for him, and all your "good" advice just made him angrier, and sadder, and well, just keep it to your self next time. Also, in this situation, noone wants to hear the following prases, so avoid them at all costs : "I've been down that road, I know how you feel, and it's no answer." "Cheer Up" or "Trust me, I know."
When you assume... don't always assume that you know what people are refering to. A prime example of this? Sometimes I go to chat rooms under the name "suicide is painless" which is the title of the M*A*S*H theme song, a song that I love very much. And so I enter the room and am immidiatly baraged with "Don't do it! There is so much to live for!" Um, thanks, but that's not what I had in mind.
So now that you know a few of the rules you are welcome to come and chat, and your good behavior will be warmly welcomed by all. If you would like to chat with me, I am usually in Geocites Broadway Backstage at 11:30pm est.