Someone said, "It's like hubski, only faster."
There we were: at least 5 bots with names like trenchfoot or trenchmouth and about 10 of the distributed hubski community - from B.C., NC, NY state, Maryland, Boston, Colorado, Florida, and Michigan - writing more or less simultaneously about topics including beer, music, tequila, bitcoin, snow (2" and fluffy), technology, sleep apnea, ADD, robots, salt, Belarus, Poland, the Netherlands, and one another.
At one point mk challenged everyone to fill in Yossarian's Flash Fiction Challenge - so if you see a bunch of activity there, all around the same time, that's why.
Was it silly? Yes, very silly. Even laugh-out-loud funny at some points. Did I learn anything? I'll just say (quoting kleinbl00), the darkness was pushed back a little more.
I don't usually get to participate in IRC - often I log in the next morning and see I missed it last night - so it was fun to be able to interact on a more immediate level! I wish people had been able to stay longer. Of course, I had to log off too. (I should be sleeping right now.)
I had fun following the different threads of the conversation as it overlapped.
I realized something recently, the difference between online and face-to-face or even IM conversation: it's the little topics that often get lost. For instance, I shoot the shit with my coworkers most days. We complain about the weather, they complain about their spouses, we trade little anecdotes that have nothing to do with anything except as a ways to pass the time, as the stories pop up in our heads. We don't/can't have that on Hubski. It makes some things easier (as I mentioned in IRC there are things about Watchmen I'm dying to talk about - and not having the ease of conversation about any topic means I'm able to sit on it better) - and we certainly do have quality discussions about interesting topics - but sometimes I just wanna know how the pregnant Hubski wives are doing. (You know who you are.) Or where elizabeth is traveling to or where everyone's from. IRC lends itself much better to that sort of conversation, what may seem superficial, but is just as important in building relationships and rapport with people.
Videochat would be fun but I don't even know if I can make that work on my computer (- or, paranoid me, would want to). I may have demonstrated that while I talk the tech talk (well, at least the old-school meme talk) - I am actually woefully ignorant of things like IRC. That's okay. That's just who I be.
It's really great to have an online community like this where members, and their personalities and quirks, are so embraced.
And for all the new members like uh_oh and PeterC and so on. Come and join us. I can't guarantee I'll be there but everyone is friendly and wants to hear from you.
And PS. We decided, there is no such thing as a Hubski "admin." What do you think, mk ?