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You have just entered room "Gaming Chat."

If you remember last page, I mentioned that those words are now meaningless. Why is that?

Well, first of all, as of 2012--after over 15 years of service--AOL decided they didn't want to devote any more resources to the service, and shut down the chats. Well, more accurately, the easy way to get into the chats. They still, apparently, exist. I don't know. Since I'm rolling on OS X, my options for getting to the chat is being invited. Since 1: Mac AIM, like Windows AIM (official clients) no longer support the gochat links, meaning that there is now no official way to get into the rooms. However, Windows users can install the old version of AIM, and hit up the rooms with the gochat links. Mac users (or, at least, those of us on El Capitian) cannot install an older version. The app crashes for me, under 10.11. Maybe it would work if I had an older version of Mac OS X installed. NOTE: Try this.

Okay, so the passage of time. What else?

Well, the rise of social media, of course. I mean, why instant message a complete stranger that you'll never see; when you could not-so-instant message people you WENT TO (or ARE GOING TO) SCHOOL WITH! Or WORK WITH! Completely forget about the 52% of Americans that used the service when MySpace became the big thing, because MY GOD, you could now embed shitty music, sparkling .gifs and bad background/font color combinations into your VERY OWN WEBPAGE! Okay, I can do this, too. But what made it special? Well, because. Uh. Reasons? I really don't know why in the actual fuck MySpace caught on so well. Besides, ranking your friends (plz pu me in ur top 8), leaving stupid little comments on their bad background and font combinations. Maybe because you could message these people and talk to them through the slow medium of it they were on and could respond to you.

I'm missing something here. Okay. hang on. Let me get this right. You add people you know, and maybe some locals you don't because they know your friends. Okay. So, I couldn't give my BFF my screen name, and he shares his friends SNs with me before 2008. WAIT! I DID THAT! NEXT! Let's see here, what was next? Creating a bad webpage. GeoCites; share the link. NEXT! Changing the ranking of your friends? I can do that, easy. Change their spot on my links page, or in my site's shout out session. NEXT! Putting stupid comments on their page. Okay, MySpace wins there. The only way my friends could write on my webpage back then was if I put a guestbook on my site. And you know everyone did. Okay, one point for MySpace. NEXT. Message them--hahahah, NOPE. The only advantage that had was they could see it later if they weren't online at the time. I'm pretty sure AIM might have had text forwarding at the time, if you managed to have a phone with textual capabilities. Oh WAIT! THIS SOUNDS LIKE EMAIL! NEVERMIND!

Of course, at the time, we jumped from hotness to hotness. So, once MySpace became the hotness, we went there. How do I know this? Well, because, I was there at the first fall. Before MySpace became super huge, there was another site that was super huge. Do you know what it was? I'll give you a hint, because I have one. It's initials are LJ.

That's right! LiveJournal! Back in miiiiiid(?) 2001, this site was the hotness among the goers of "Gaming Chat". So, we kinda pulled up or anchors in the AIM room "Gaming Chat", and set sail for these new lands. We harbored here for a good number of years. We eventually reconnected, and all was good. We even made communities about our old port. Multiple communities, because ::drama::. Anyhow, we talked in these communities, and wanted to go back to our old home. But, for some reason, staying on LiveJournal was better. We slowly abandoned our character sites to make character journals (I can't even talk shit, because I did, too.) and then abandoned Gaming Chat for an exclusive community that was ran by one of the biggest liars I know. Yes, I'm going to catch slack for that if any of you old time GC goers see this. I don't give one single fuck. Sure, she was a good role player and 'friends' with all of us. But, she also took advantage of people to get things. I used to have proof of this, and I've shared this proof with two people that I know and trust. Flame me all you want. Going on. We abandoned the instantaneous method of communication and went to something a bit slower, and methodical. And you know what?



For the most part. We could now be in a long long session without wrangling up everyone for a session and having people flake out, or disconnect, or whatever. We could roleplay at our leisure. It was amazing. Except for one thing. That little word up there..kinda. There was a reason this community failed. There were nine members that posted. Nine. People. In my example text for the gaming chat, there were at least eleven active RPers, THAT NIGHT. The AIM RP community was large-ish. I knew of 20, others knew many more. So, nine isn't a lot. And at least four of the characters were played by two people, so that makes seven people. I was Trunks in that community. Only two other members bothered to acknowledge my character. One of which was because I nearly ran into the guy as I had Trunks leave. Eventually, Thalla-mun and I would continue replying to each other in our respective character journals--which was fun. But, it really sucked all the cocks to post to a community to have one person bother to play with you. And, that's really how the community stayed, if you bothered to read the newer entries. Certain people would play with certain people, while others could get fucked. I really think that's what finally killed the game. As you can see, posts to it took longer and longer to show. Thalla-mun and I fired off about 20 posts to each other after she and I left the community's story. It was good and cool. The medium could work, after all. Except, of course, none of us really put much effort into it. We'd bitch about the lack of RP in the Gaming Chat, make a community for the RPers, only invite a small percent of them, then ignore some of them in the community that already ignores people. Yeah, good way to kill something enjoyable! *Thumbs up* Do you know what happened after that community slowly died the death it needed?

We made communities about the "Gaming Chat", I had mentioned those. But not how they worked. So, these communities were not invite only, they were open. So, really any LiveJournal member could join the community. Except we'd ignore the fuck out of them if they were not a "Gaming Chat Regular". We'd then sometimes post, and add each other as LJ friends if we'd so desire. Except, we'd either bitch about the GC, or bitch about going into the GC at a certain time, or going into special private chats. We really didn't do too many of these things that often. The community slowly dried up, with postings becoming more and more sporadic. It was happening. The crew, the people in the code were starting to grow. No matter the age of us when we became a member of "Gaming Chat", it had been at least three years at that point. We were growing up, maturing. Wanting to do new things, and see new things. This happened to us all. We slowly went our separate ways. This happens, doesn't it? By this time, there were other sites, the younglings were now high schoolers, the older ones were now working full time. It was time for things to, unfortunately, change. Mind you, this was ELEVEN YEARS AGO (as of 2016). I know, for me, I finally become a SomethingAwful Forums goon, and have loved every second of it. I don't post much now, but I love the community. I think I'll start vising Traditional Games some, and hop into a new thread and see if I have it in me. I also moved, literally, and some of the people I work with are into D&D. So, my tale has a nice butt. And I do like nice butts. But, don't get me wrong. I miss what life was fifteen years ago, and I know I'm not the only one. In the past week, through basic searching, there's a few others that miss it, too.

In conclusion, the fall was something that was going to happen no matter what. We could have had the best RPers on the planet, the tightest-knit friendships, or the greatest community and it still would have happened. As time passed, the internet became something different, and we used it in different ways. As time passed, we all became older and grew as people. Our time started becoming less and less, and we valued it more and more. Gone were the nights of sitting in Gaming Chat, talking all night. Here were the days of posting to LiveJournal now. We could post when we had time. Our friends could respond when they had time. And for awhile it worked. Then we got cocky, and became elitest with our RP circle, and it died. In that time, LJ slowly became abandoned for other sites and the new internet trends. The days of talking to strangers online were flickering out, and the days of talking to people you already knew and expanding your local circle were growing ever brighter. And now, in 2016, the flame is almost out with only a select few Fire Keepers.

And, you know what? It's totally okay. It's natural that it happened. As we grow up and move, we lose contact with friends we thought we would have forever. It's okay for that to happen, it's okay to miss them, and it's even okay to think about those times with them. Most the them feel the exact same way, too. And, you know what, before the internet it was hard to keep in contact if you wanted to, and it's even harder to say thank you. Let me get this off of my chest.

To those of you who frequented the "Gaming Chat" circa 2000-2002, I want you to know that because of you people, and what we did, that I still have some of the best memories of my life. I'm glad that you people behind the code came into my life, even if it was just text on a PowerBook's screen, those were some amazing times to be a part of something. Thank you. Just, thank you. Those are wonderful memories. To those of you who decided to Dice RP with me, let it be known, that the previous statement pertains to you, with an extra special thank you. You may have known it at the time, but we were seriously forging something. Even if it only lasted a few months, before the LJ exodus, we made trails, and we started something that could have been great. Thank you for letting me having one of the biggest parts in it.

Even though this page was about the fall of something, it was never intended to be negative. It was meant to illustrate the fall and how it was natural. I think I got that point across.

I may add more to this page later. However, as far as I'm concerned, this historical document is complete. If any of you old GCers happen to stumble on this page, hit me up on AIM (handle: Oapboap), if you want to discuss the fall in greater depth; or what you did after the fall.

This document last modified Wednesday, 27-Jan-2016 15:48:45 PST.

I typed this on a keyboard from 2001. This automatically makes the page more legit.

"The Last Website" and all pages within are © "Oapboap"; like you'd want to steal content, anyhow. All images that are not mine belong to their respective owners. Image links will be shared in the "Credits" page.