-!- Now talking on #IRC
-!- Topic for #IRC:

The Year is 20XX AD
The Internetwork is has decayed, and severed off from it's past
All the while a few brave stalwarts still roam what remains of the institutions of old
Forever lost, wandering through the cables

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I probably shouldn't HAVE to start off with an explanation of what IRC is, but considering I myself was none the wiser until a few years back, and it probably isn't taught in schools of Internet Intercourse anymore, maybe i should preface with this: Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol released in 1988, allowing for instant text messaging through Channels, hosted on individuals decentralized networks. It was created by Jarkko Oikarinen, a finn, in Finlands every reaching quest to be able to take credit for every Computer related invention. (Amousingly, the creator still keeps up a adorably simplistic Personal Website. As it is a protocol and not a application, IRC networks can be accessed from a myriad of different applications, so called IRC clients, on pretty much any operating system released in the past 40 years.

Why use such an ancient protocol? Well... It still works.
While lacking many features now considered common place, such as sending images or the addition of voice chat, instead remaining as a pure chat program, IRC has throughout its almost 40 years of existence carved out its status of being .... . It is "ol' reliable", as a friend of mine puts it. The fact that it's not tied to any specific software, and disconnected from any company, allows IRC clients to constantly update and cater to specific users, and you to change clients out of preference whenever you want. It's simplicity and extremely light weight nature also allows it to run on pretty much any device with a Internet connection. It was designed for computers of 1988, after all.

In terms of userbase, you can be quite sure that accessing IRC, with it's statues as a old filters out anyone or anyone who tries to access your Network through a cellphone. A personal gripe of mine regarding applications such as Discord, is the prevelance .

In terms of health, 9 out of 10 doctors recommend getting on IRC! Benefits include faster typing speed, curing of social anxiety, reduced risk of Carpal tunnel syndrome, having your soul saved from damnation, and an increased attention span.

-!- What to do when your Doctor prescribed getting on IRC?

1. Download an IRC client, popular choices include Hexchat, IRSSI, and Pidgin
2. Once on, type /server followed by the address of the server to connect
3. Type "/join #<channelname>" to join a channel and start chatting
4. Please try not to accidentally close IRC or throw your computer off a cliff 5 minutes after joining (Important!)

There's a few more things to it, but as you are now connected to all of human knowledge, you should just know it, or you'll figure it out soon enough.

-!- IMPORTANT NOTICE!

There has recently been many reports of people being hacked and having their IRC information stolen over networks. Foreign adversaries are using the common vulnerability known as the /whois command, which instantly let's them know the users real name, channel residence, Social Security Number (also known as a Vhost), and working hours. Please stay safe out there!

-!- KoshkaIRC

It was... already a few years back ._., ... when a friend of mine, Koshka, created his own IRC network, in a worthy attempt It's a somewhat isolated server, HEAR THE BRAVE DECELERATION OF OUR FOUNDER: 

koshka, i dont nkow haewhat any of this shit d00d, wtf!

Alone on a Friday Night? Come join us on Koshka.love's very own Owncast server

Owncast is a free self hosted server allowing for Self

On IRC.koshka.love we've begun organising communal watch-alongs for movies and TV-shows, for anyone on the network to join, using a owncast server accessed through TV.koshka.love. You will need a password to acces the website, which you'll find in the IRC channel. What films to watch and when is usually decided in #ktv. Any suggestions are welcome, to ensure it doesn't forever rot in the pile of "to-watch", consider suggesting a day/time alongside the film, and please make sure you are free to join then. The first movie to get the honour of being streamed through KoshkaTV was The Terminator, In addition to sporadic movie streams, a few TV shows have been scheduled to air one or two episodes every Saturday.

Great, now you know of the existence of IRC, and the network I currently spend the most time in. We live in the information age, so you obviously have a computer, and so, you'll join us, right?

Ready?_

 

That's it, that's all you should need to know to set off on using IRC, Most people would be satisfied by now...
But maybe you aren't like most people, maybe you thirst for more...
Maybe you want to go beyond what regular IRC has to offer...
Maybe you want your own IRC, with cats, and guns...
well then, scroll Down, my child <(*-*)>


Altar Of Comic Chat

Microsoft Comic Chat, later shortened to the more boring Microsoft Chat, is an experimental and creative IRC client released in 1996. Sitting on top of regular IRC, it adds a graphical interface, allowing you to sport avatars, and places your messages alongside your avatar inside a comic strip. A testament to a more experimental era of computing, it allows for a truly unique way to use IRC, never seen before or after Comic Chat's release, and not something you could dream of seeing in modern chatting applications. Speaking from personal experience, ...

At the heart of Comic Chat lies the avatars Outside of just a few included avatars, I have personally taken to sporting The tools for creating your own avatars can still easily be found, just note you will need to run them in a virtual machine of either Windows 98, or Windows XP.

Despite later coming pre-installed on Windows 98, Comic Chat never received much mainstream notoriety, but was popular enough for some brave stalwarts to adamantly stick with Comic Chat through decades after it's release. It has also, as of recently, experienced a renewed surge of popularity within a friendgroup on KoshkaIRC, spurred on largely by the efforts of Shadowm00n, and later on Koshka and Cidoku. As special information encoded in messages shows up to anyone not on Comic Chat, KoshkaIRC hosts a channel dedicated to the Client, #comicchat. To concentrate the activity in the channel, a day long Comic Chat event, which we have dubbed Comic Chat Caturday, has been declared, and encourages chatting all day long in #comicchat during Saturdays

The undisputed one stop shop for downloading anything related to comic chat, including the client itself, new avatars, and software for creating your own avatars, is Mermaid Elizabeth's Comic Chat Resource page I have personally had the pleasure of chatting with Elizabeth (on Comic Chat, of course) and have to respect her for her preservation efforts regarding everything related to this obscure client. She has even gone so far as to archive defunct websites that used to host avatars on her site.

If Comic Chat sounds interesting to you, please consider installing it and trying it out. For anyone on linux, Shadowm00n has written a simple guide on getting comic chat and it's dependencies working via the compatibility layer Wine. It should only take around 5 minutes to follow and requires mostly copying commands. When you're client is set up, join us in #comicchat on IRC.koshka.love, thought note that you may be unlikely to see any acitivy outside of around 10-23 UTC, which you can blame on timezones.

Links

Comical Comic Chat Screenshots

Koshka's writings on Comic Chat & its advantages