Millennials - can you remember this?

[Creu]

I was watching a TikTok earlier where someone was talking about chat rooms in the early noughties. I'd completely forgotten about the amount of time I spent on these pre-MSN messenger & The Sims.

I'm trying to remember the name of a specific one and I can't and it's really bothering me!

Every time someone logged in they could chose a new name. I think it had a black screen and you chose your font and font colour. There was a main board that people got kicked out for 'flooding' (posting too many messages in a row). The names of everyone in the chat room were on the right hand side of the screen and you clicked on their name to message them. I think swearing was banned.

Something like worldwidechat?

I used to go on one called 'The Junction' quite a bit, also Yahoo Chat or Channel 4 Chat. This would have been around 2000 maybe?

I think it was called something like "worldwide teen chat" I don't want to google it though, a bit dodgy.

@Hawkerslife I remember faceparty. That pre-dated MySpace and Facebook, I think. I remember I had to put in my hair colour and I had just discovered 'box dye' and was really said I had to choose 'blonde - bleached'

321teenchat!

Teenchat! I out twenty chat earlier (autocorrect I think) but that may well have been a thing too.

Lycos. Yea I remember that!

So many sexual chats. I was older though, so maybe less risky.

@Elecrricmaracas that might be the one I was confusing twentychat for. I remember one that had numbers in the name.

321 chat had different branches. We had a grand old time fucking around in 321seniorchat 🤣🤣

There was also love@lycos, where you set up
A dating profile!

Hahaha I remember that, didn't last long did it

Ah yes I frequented MSN Chatrooms and Lydia mainly, age 11-13, which is absolutely horrifying now. I actually think I still have email contacts saved to a Hotmail address of men who were almost certainly massive paedophiles.

Oh god, this is bringing back memories. I remember going on at about age 13 and someone saying sexual things. Anyone remember Piczo as well?

Remember on AOL chat rooms - if someone you were 'friends' with logged on the AOL woman would say 'you have company'

Chat Roulette? We used to go on that all the time. It was hilarious and disgusting in equal measures 🤣

Oh my god yes ASL brings back so many memories!!!!! Always the opening line on a new chat! Good times

Only one I remember that was black was called Tagged.

Trip down memory lane. I actually met my H on mIRC back in 2002!

Used paltalk, icq (ooohoooh - that sound will stick with me for life), MSN, yahoo, webcrawler (anyone old enough to remember that one?) And of AOL

I was clearly as massive geek

I remember Habbo hotel 😁

There was one that was like a cartoon strip. Reddit tells me it was Microsoft Comic Chat - pretty clever for its time!

Then ICQ for instant messaging.

Then WinMX chat rooms while illegally downloading music and MSN Messenger for chat. But I remember MSN only being people you added, you couldn’t be messaged by randoms.

I met some great people in the chat rooms that I’m still in touch with now. And plenty of pervs that I’m not.

MSN was all about passively aggressively quoting emo lyrics in your status.

No, it definitely wasn't chatroulette, MSN messenger or AOL.

The conversation would be the same format
A/S/L
Bra size?
Email address? And then you would check your email, download a photo of 'them' on a dial up connection only for it to be a dick pic.

MySpace? A bit like Facebook?

This post is brilliant!

There was TeenChat, AOL chat, msn chat, msn gaming zone where you could play games AND chat. The world was our oyster haha.

Then there was rathergood.com, frog in a blender, rotten.....

Oh and the choice of search engines! Before Google when you would choose whether to ask Jeeves or yahoo etc.

I break out in a cold sweat imagining my daughter accessing 3/4 of this stuff but it was great fun for us!

Does anyone else remember the email chain letters?

Lycos chat is still ongoing! I remember from the early 00s - UKchat, Freeserve, which became Wanadoo, then Orange chat. MSN community chat rooms, Yahoo chat, Justchat, ICQ, Aol chat. I'm sure there were others.

Then social media appeared, together with mobile messaging apps and most chat rooms just faded away. I wasn't a chat addict or anything. 😜

I used to love teenchat.net (which was different to teenchat.com). It was more like a magazine with a blog/diary section that each user could use and then a chat feature. I spoke to lots of genuine people and loved learning about their lives elsewhere in the world. Then I spoke to a lot of pervs!

~~* ~~ ReAl EyEs ReAliSe rEaL LiEs ~~~~