Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Saturday, June 1, 2013

We Chat in the Virtual World

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WeChat's Youtube channel
Well chatting is an old addiction!! When I looked at this contest by ‘wechat’ I went back to my chatting days! I believe the people who got introduced to internet in the 90’s and had the courage to chat with strangers and gradually made good friends, sometimes got heartbroken really did feel the pulse the of virtual world. Why is that our time was different from that of today is, then rarely did people have PC at home, even if they had internet was a luxury. So most people visited cyber café for important work like checking mails, searching jobs etc. but there were also these spoiled brats like me, who visited cyber café just to chat with strangers!! What was the need to chat with strangers? Because the percentage of internet users was less, so obviously I would not find anybody from my friend list online there! So it’s better to chat with those who are online than looking at offline known friends!
I just loved the MiRc ( my internet remote chat) application. It was so challenging to learn the shortcut keys and commands. There used to be so many interesting user names like NoMan, alligator, enigma, mysterious, mallige, sampige etc…

And when learnt to find how to look at IP address and identify the user even if he has changed user name, it was like Eureka!! For me.
I did chat with many people but these people never appeared in front of me with their real name and real face. So one day myself and my friend just thought of a prank. I just peeped into the monitor of the person sitting next and started chatting with him. That was in Yahoo messenger. We did not reveal to him that day, that it was us. So he continued to chat, unaware that we have seen him. He was not really good looking. So he was in the friends list, I continued to chat, he wanted to meet me, but he told that he is not so good looking, dark and fat etc. Then I told, I know that and I had seen him! This person was a malayalee. Then there was another person who was a doctor. And I really doubted whether he was a doctor, as he used to be online all the time. He said he is preparing for IAS exams, we exchanged phone numbers and to test, if he is really preparing for IAS exams, I used to ask him GK questions, and to my surprise he always answered it right. So I really wanted to meet him. But this fellow went on telling if you meet me you will run away! I am so ugly etc etc. But I would not take a NO, so from phone number I got his address, and I remembered he had once told me the place where he works, and went to meet him directly. He was a doctor in a village on the outskirts of Bangalore. So he had lots of time to chat!! He told me he is married, and he definitely looked scary! And he was really shocked to see me there.
So the internet stories go on and on, some have become so good friends that I have almost forgot that I met them on the internet highway.
Will wechat bring back that experience? With so many known friends in fb and gmail, and we hardly have time to ping somebody, will we use wechat and talk with anyone??
May be we should, because if cannot travel the world, wechat will bring the world near to you!!