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Welcome to "Chat Etiquette: The Do's and Don'ts of On-line Conversation! This little deal has taken quite sometime to finish, but now it is available for public viewing. Here you will find just about everything dealing with Internet and IRC (Internet Relay Chats) chats. From how to strike up a conversation to defending yourself from people soliciting sexually explicit material. So on with the show! To view a particular subject just click on any of the following in the table of contents.
Special Note: This was last updated on January 13, 1998 and is version 2.1!
ODE TO "I'm just gettin' on for a MINUTE"
1996, by K. Weston
submitted to me by Brandi Yaunt
I got up this morning, but haven't yet dressed.
My dishes aren't done, and my house is a mess.
Have not done my work, have not fed the cat,
Just on line for a second, and popped in to "chat".
I used to watch TV, I used to cook Mex,
I think I remember...yeah, I used to have SEX!
I used to walk upright, now roll on my chair,
Tho' it causes the neighborhood children to stare.
I wanted to travel around on the Net,
Been too busy chatting to get on there yet.
I wanted to spreadsheet, word process, or paint,
But gettin' on with them is just what I ain't!
So much to learn and I wanted to but
I'm too busy chatting and splitting a gut,
Talkin' and listenin'...is it such a sin?
Oh, gawd, what a fix I have got myself in!
Then up pops a name on my neat Buddy List,
Think I'll go out and give HIS tail a twist!
And in comes an IM from some weirdo guy
I cuss 'im, insult 'im, and tell him "bye bye".
Is there a 12 step, support group, or such?
For those of us folks who chat on too much?
If there was a group, I would like it just fine,
Except that it prob'ly would be here online!
Are there therapists here? I think that I saw some
Its got me, its got me, its power is AWESOME.
It's my new computer, I've had it one week,
Now I look in the mirror and I see a "geek".
Or maybe a geekess, but I see the signs,
Please help me, please help me, please get me offline!
Or better, please Email a burger and fries,
'Cause I'm staying ONLINE, at least 'til I die!!!
Internet chats are a new forum for people to hold discussions in this new age of computer technology. Many conversations held range in a variety of topics and cou're a basketball fan and are unsure what to use for a name. Be screwy. Like call yourself "Slam Dunkie Fiend," or something to that effect. Creativity is the key. If you have an interest in a particular subject try to find a very subtle way of displaying your name. Only a select few who know what it deals with will actually know and will get people asking questions bringing attention to you. This is something that I have done myself.
Remember creativity is the main thing here. Don't go with a name that is just rude, crude, vile, and out-right obnoxious. People will automatically tag you as a pervert and a host of other names taken out of a thesaurus on the word "bonehead," especially if you are in a chat that is a general chat area. Don't do this if you intend on being in the chat for a long time. You will be ignored, considered a hazard, insulted out of the chat, or kicked out by the people or the systems operators overlooking the place.
After you have gotten your name some Internet chats (not IRC chats and text only) have the option of allowing you to post up a picture next to your name. This is kind of a marking or identifying icon for you. It's a pretty simple process, just find a picture of appropriate size, something small and doesn't take up the entire screen (some chats have a deal where you are limited on the file size of the picture). Remember this picture is going to represent your name and yourself in particular. And of course you can post up your very own snap shot of yourself if you want everyone in the chat to know what you look like. But be warned. Some chatters will make fun of you because you were nutty enough to post your own picture up. Believe me, I've had it happen. In my opinion some of these idiots were just jealous of what I did so ignore people who make fun of those who post their own picture up. To post your picture up you will have to refer to whatever the chat has for instructions on how to post up your picture next to your name. Many chats have different ways of doing this so unfortunately I cannot give you the stuff on it other than remember the whole address of the picture and you will definitely have to use the http:// URL for it.
Some Internet chats allow you to post up pictures for other chatters to view. And again some have file size limitations. As for how to post these up, again each chat has their own way of having you post miscellaneous pictures. Just remember the address of the picture and refer to any instructions the chat has of posting up regular pictures for the chatters viewing pleasure.
The next step is how to talk to people. Saying a nice greeting to everyone is the best way to catch someone's attention. If that doesn't work usually it's best to address someone with a question. For example, to ask someone a question you may want to use this format to do it and to talk to others the same way:
Person's name: Your question
Most of the time you will get someone's attention this way. Try not to yell, this is where
you either type in all capitals or use text editing to increase the font size and bold type of
your message. In IRC's you can only type in all capitals, there is no text editing. It is
another way of getting another chatter to talk to you, but it is considered to be rude unless
you have no choice to, which is usually when no matter what you have said in the chat, everyone
is still ignoring you even though you have not typed anything rude or insulting.
To cut down time on typing, many people have started using abbreviations for various actions and phrases. Many of the abbreviations used in chats have pretty much become universal and a lot have become creatively humorous thanks to many regulars in those chat rooms. The following abbreviations and their meanings are some of the most commonly used out there. For a much bigger list the WBS Chat Book has a whole list compiled from various users from all over including various smileys!! This is most of the list from that place:
AFAIK As Far As I Know
AFK Away From Keyboard
ASAP As Soon As Possible
BBL Be Back Later
BBN Bye Bye Now
BBS Be Back Soon
BEG Big Evil Grin
BF Boy Friend
BRB Be Right Back
BTW By The Way
BWL Bursting With Laughter
C&G Chuckle and Grin
CID Crying In Disgrace
CNP... Continued in Next Post
CP Chat Post
CSG Chuckle Snicker Grin
CYA See Ya
CYAL8R See You Later
DLTBBB Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite
EG Evil Grin
EMSG Email Message
FYI For Your Information
GF Girl Friend
GFN Gone For Now
GMBO Giggling My Butt Off
GMTA Great Minds Think Alike
GTSY Glad To See You
H&K Hug and Kiss
HABU Have A Better 'Un
HAGN Have A Good Night
HAGU Have A Good 'Un
HHIS Hanging Head in Shame
IC I See
IGP I Gotta Pee
IMO In My Opinion
IMHO In My Humble Opinion
IRL In Real Life
IWALU I Will Always Love You
JMO Just My Opinion
JTLYK Just To Let You Know
KIT Keep In Touch
KOC Kiss On Cheek
KOL Kiss On Lips
L8R Later
L8R G8R Later 'Gater
LHM Lord Help Me
LHO Laughing Head Off
LHU Lord Help Us
LOL Laugh Out Loud
LSHMBB Laughing So Hard My Belly is Bouncing
LSHMBH Laughing So Hard My Belly Hurts
LTNS Long Time No See
LTS Laughing To Self
LUWAMH Love You With All My Heart
LY Love Ya
OIC Oh, I See
OL Old Lady (wife, girlfriend)
OM Old Man (husband, boyfriend)
OTTOMH Off The Top of My Head
PDS Please Don't Shoot
PM Private Message
PMFJI Pardon Me For Jumping In
PMP Peed My Pants
POAHF Put On A Happy Face
Poof Has left the chat room.
QSL Reply
QSO Conversation
QT Cutie
ROFL Rolling On Floor Laughing
ROFLAPMP ...And Peeing My Pants
ROFLMAO ...My A** Off
ROFLMAOAY ...My A** Off At You
ROFLMAOWTIME ...With Tears In My Eyes
ROFLUTS ...Unable to Speak
RTSM Read The Stupid Manual!
SETE Smiling Ear To Ear
SHID Slaps Head In Disgust
SO Significant Other
SWAK Sealed With A Kiss
SWL Screaming with Laughter
SYS See You Soon
TA Thanks Again
TOY Thinking Of You
TTFN Ta Ta For Now
TTYL Talk To you Later
WB Welcome Back
WTH What/Who The Heck
YBS You'll Be Sorry
YG Young Gentleman
YL Young Lady
YM Young Man
ttyl talk to you later
ttys talk to you soon
tcob taking care of business
ttfn ta ta for now
Another thing that was previously mentioned is your text size and appearance. If you choose you can use text editing to increase the size of your text to catch someone's attention. This can make your messages in bold, italics, or color. By doing this to your messages and not making the text big you make your messages more unique and personalized. Once again refer to any instructions a chat room has pertaining to text editing use. This usage however cannot be done in IRC chats. Only the CAPS LOCK can be used to make your text larger.
Another aspect of chat rooms is doing a particular action within the chat. The format used to do it is like this: **your action here**. You can use as many asterixes as you want when typing these out. The actions you do can be pretty much anything. From hugging an on-line friend to giving someone a cyber-beer to drink. Also you can use the abbreviations previously mentioned also. When in IRC chats there's the "/me" command to do your actions. Just type it in like this: /me your action here, and it will print out your name and the action you just did. Or if you want to do the asterix technique instead in an IRC chat you can do that also. It depends on the person's preference of doing their actions. These sure come in handy when you want to give someone a cyber-smooch or a wedgie from the dark depths of the ocean!
Now during a conversation with someone, they happen to ask for your homepage address or e-mail address, but you don't know how to post it up. This is not a problem. Considering most Internet chats are very lenient with this it's very easy to post up an address. In most cases all you have to do in Internet chats is just type out the web site address' URL, like this:
http://web_address_here
With e-mail addresses the format is a bit different:
mailto:full_address_here
In some Internet chats you may have to employ full HTML coding to post up a web or mail link. Again you will have to refer to any instructions that the chat has on posting links. With IRC chats however just type in the addresses for the person to write down since IRC's are text only and you cannot go from an IRC chat room directly to the world wide web. It's a different program and connection.
Ahhhhh, cyber-love. Such a new and wonderful concept, that is until you see the person you're talking to in person! **chuckle** Just kidding there folks. While chatting away you may come across someone who happens to have your same interests. And after talking with this person for some time you may become attracted to them and vice versa. It just might be what we call in cyberspace, cyber-love. A lot of people out there have met their significant others through the computers and why shouldn't you? There's just a few things to follow and to keep an eye on. Considering that this relationship maybe over a long distance the chances of you meeting the other person are almost next to none. But don't let this stop you from keeping in contact of each other. Usually people will keep in contact through e-mail, regular mail, and sometimes phone calls. And if you do somehow find a way to meet, hey more power to you! Just keep in mind however that things can happen in a chat just as they do outside. An example would be cyber-cheating. Just as the name implies, cheating can happen on a computer just as in real life. Just read those stories of married people having affairs on-line. All I can say is, cheating through a computer is ridiculous, but unfortunately it happens. And like I mentioned of other stuff happening, they can also be messing around with someone not on-line and totally stabbing you in the back. Just be careful when getting into a long distance relationship with someone, it may seem great and everything, but something just might be lurking under the surface.
If you happen to get into a relationship on-line through a chat always be friendly toward the other person, unless they happen to do something that makes you upset, use whatever means necessary to break off the relationship. If you are looking for a relationship on-line, try a singles chat. Don't go into a chat not truly meant for cyber-love expecting to find the right person immediately. If you do decide to crash a different chat, once again be careful. And finally if you happened to be dragged into a relationship and you weren't intending on getting involved with one, be cordial toward the other person. There's nothing wrong about being friendly. Who knows? Things can develop into wonderful stuff.
On occasion you will come across a chatter who will be irate with you on something you said or who just thinks they are "da bomb." Usually this will be the result of a disagreement on a particular subject or something that can believed derogatory to many chatters. Also there is a growing number of chatters who just go into rooms to annoy other chatters. These people will just pick someone out of the crowd and start insulting them for no apparent reason other than to make themselves look cool and that they supposedly know everything. Whether you purposely or inadvertently make some chatter irritable you will need to know how to defend your comments or yourself against such people and how to get back at them.
Pretty much most cyber-fights consist of insulting the other person. How you insult them and how you time the insult is critical in embarrassing the other person. First we will go into on how to defend yourself. First off, firing back in the normal thing to do, but not always. The best defense is to ignore the offending chatter. Usually this will prompt them to continue ranting on how much of a weenie you are on not fighting back. But believe me it is an effective way of dealing with insulting people. Usually some Internet chats will have an ignore box of where you can put someone's name into it and it will not post up their messages unless you say so. IRCs do not have this depending on a room's setup though and normally IRC chat room operators will either kick someone out of the room with a warning or ban them completely.
If you are just dealing with someone who is in disagreement over a comment of yours, you can pretty much remedy the situation very cleanly by being polite and ask them why they disagree. Now if you are in the wrong over your comment then be cordial and apologize about what you said. These are two ways to effectively diffuse a potential "flame war" between you and another or more chatters over something very trivial.
To go on the offensive in a chat room is a little bit different. You can use insults both as an offensive and defensive screen. But pretty much it's more offensive than anything else. :) When dealing with the perpetrator or perpetrators it's a good thing to have a quick and reflexive wit or a very good humorous mind. Spur of the moment humorous and embarrassing insults will usually shut people up and other times it will just aggravate them making the whole situation even worse than before. Another thing is to watch how they do their insults. Don't sink to their level if they use a lot of profanity, very vulgar references, and mama jokes. By matching what they are typing you're saying to everyone else in the chat room that you are just as rude, crude, and vile as they are and don't have much of an imagination.
By using humorous insults people in the chats will start laughing at the intended victim, especially if they were being obnoxious at the beginning. This tactic will also get chatters to back you up against the offending chatter. If you have to get nasty with your insults, get descriptive but don't use profane words if you can help it. Believe me I have gotten very graphic at times to where I pretty much grossed the offenders out and they left me alone after that. And it definitely got some good laughs. :) And there have been times where I knew some chatters defending themselves that too have gotten very graphic to the point where it severally embarrassed the offender or offenders and were left alone after that. There are two more things to keep in mind. One is that if you have a lot of on-line friends, reinforcements in flame wars or cyber-fights really help, especially if they know you personally on-line or in real life. And two try to keep cyber fights and flame wars from spilling into the e-mail. Things can get nasty when e-mail gets involved, like floods and e-mail bombs. If e-mail does become involved just be careful of what you do.
Another problem encountered in many chat rooms and it happens to be a rampant thing these days, is cyber sex. This really is just two or more people typing in their fantasies of what they're going to do to the other person. It's a very simple, but an offending concept in most chat circles. Also it's growing in popularity as an alternative to safe sex.
There are a several ways of dealing with someone trying to get you to have cyber sex with them. One, a plain and simple no will suffice and a minor threat following it helps too. Two, reporting the little pervert to the person watching over the chat is one way to get them kicked out. Three, (this happens to be my favorite) you can mess with their minds by acting like you want to engage in the act and then start saying some funny stuff that will embarrass them. If you can totally make fun of them for doing this and turning their keyboard fantasy into a complete farce it is well worth the laugh. And four, you can engage in this at your own free will. If you do decide to engage in cyber sex just make sure it is not against the rules to do something like this in the chat room you're in. Numerous chatters on-line have come up with some humorous reasons of why people engage in cyber sex. Some of them included that the chatters doing this act are uglier than sin and cannot get a date, they spend too much time on the computer and not enough time away from it, and it's a safe way of not getting infected with a sexually transmitted disease.
As previously mentioned there comes a time where you will have someone come on-line and start insulting people left and right, making crude remarks every which way, and if it's a regular internet chat that person will sometimes post up pictures that are very tasteless just to annoy everyone. This is definitely not the right way to make any friends on-line.
If you happen to be in the mood to actually be an obnoxious chatter and want terrorize a chat room just remember, find the right chat room where the people deserve to be picked on. Adult sex chats are the one of the prime areas to do this The people in there constantly are engaged in cyber sex and trading pornographic pictures and at most times they deserved to be terrorized and made fun of on-line. Also if the chat is full of chatters acting like morons, for example some chats with the topic of video games have a number of chatters proclaiming to be the master of whatever game they're discussing about, these people are prime targets of being put in their place.
A thing to remember is when picking on people who deserve to picked on in a chat don't do it in a chat that you frequent and are well known in. If you do, try to change names if possible, then engage in your mischief. And if you do this in a chat that you have just discovered and want to come back to later for a regular chat session you may be marked as a trouble maker. This can also be an automatic way of getting kicked out for life by the other chatters or the chat room operator. Just look for a chat that will definitely have a majority of chatters in it posturing and saying they're God's gift to the computer. Then give them a drubbing and a cyber-wedgie that they will never forget and have other chatters laughing themselves silly.
There are common courtesies to follow when in chats. Following them will put you in other chatters eyes as being cordial, polite, and a nice person. Some of those courtesies are as follows. One, try not to spy on others you know in different chat rooms. If they mention that they will be engaged in private conversation with someone or another group, please respect their privacy. It's just like in real life when someone needs to talk to another or others in private. Two, be kind to chat room newcomers. These people usually are not sure of what to do and will be a bit unsure of what to say. Be friendly and welcome them into the chat room. Three, do not abuse your power if you are a chat room operator or a very well known regular. Just because you may know more than the others in the chat gives you no right to lord your intelligence or popularity over everyone else's heads. And four, try not to take up a lot of space for posting your messages. A lot of chatters do not like scrolling down a lot just to see a few messages after yours. If you do have to type a long message to another person either send it private, if you can, or chop it up into bits. You have to be respectful of other chatters if you frequent a chat room regularly.
Chats are fun to be in, especially if they involve a special topic you're interested in or you're just looking for a nice conversation without all the in-your-face hassle. Just remember how to behave yourself while in them and you'll do just nicely. Many people who have not behaved themselves have had other chatters gang up on them like ravenous pirana and deal with them appropriately. Just remember to have fun, enjoy the discussions, and watch out for them 'dar typos!!'
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