Chatting
ARR 07/96
I came online in at the end of March 96 and started my home
page at the end of May 96. So as you
can see I am still relatively new to this but I love it
already! I have had a lot of fun learning how
to build my web site and I hope you enjoyed your visit to my
cyber home. Where I spend most of my time on-line though is
in my favorite chat forum. I have found chatting to be a fun
way to get personal with the Internet. By entering a chat
forum you open the whole world up with your computer screen
and keyboard . People from all woks of life are there just
waiting to chat. In any given forum you may find housewives,
professors, computer experts and receptionists all chatting.
People from places as far as a foreign country or as close
as your neighborhood are on-line to chat on virtually every
subject. I was always shocked in the beginning to find out I
was chatting with people in Europe or Asia, it seemed so
strange because we were on different sides of the earth yet
talking like we were in the supermarket checkout line. With
no accents or physical traits to give you away everyone is
equal. If you are interested in any topic, parenting to
sports, poetry to politics you can find hundreds of others
who share your interests or are willing to introduce you to
theirs! Any time of the day or night someone is on-line;
some part of the world is always awake or at least up really
late! No matter when you have time to turn on your computer
you will find a chat forum full of friendly chatters waiting
to talk. People that you otherwise would never be exposed to
due to geographical, social, cultural or political reasons
are all of a sudden giving you advice on potty training,
sharing a recipe, explaining how to download a new program
or trading an URL for information on their home town. This
planet seems a lot smaller and a lot friendlier when you
know people around the world! I think the Internet breeds
tolerance and understanding by throwing all these normal,
common, everyday folks into a chat forum and letting them
get to know one another as individuals. In a chat forum
race, color, ethnicity, social status, economic situation
and religion are not the first things you see, like in real
life, they eventually may come out but friendships are
not started by searching out your peers. You don't know they
are even possibly your peers until you get to know them. You
end up chatting with people you may never have been exposed
to or given the time of day to in real life and before you
know it a friendship has formed. I know this from
experience, some of my chat friends are people I would never
have met any other way because of where I live and my
lifestyle. At the very least you get to see a wide cross
section of people everyday even if your friends/chatting
circle is small. After you end up chatting in a forum for
awhile you get to know a group of people. Then when you
arrive in the forum you have all your friends saying hi,
asking how the kids are, or wondering if you won your
softball game, just like stopping by your favorite coffee
shop or local pub, everyone knows your name! It is a place
to belong where you'll always find an ear to listen and
maybe a bit of advice. It's very nice when you get past the
constant introductions and information sharing stage and
have a group of chatters that you know, though new people
are constantly entering and you still have to go over the
information again. It is at this point that making a Home
Page is useful! A Home Page is a personal web site on the
Internet (just like this one) that you can build. Some sites
charge fees to maintain your site but there are a few places
that allow personal web sites for free, such as here at Geocities. You can fill
your home page with information about yourself, family,
hobbies, interests or pretty much anything you want for that
matter! They take a bit of patience to build and will
require you to learn a lot of new stuff but it will enhance
your Internet experience! Then when you meet someone new you
can just send them to your Home page to get a brief run down
or in some cases a detailed account, of who you are. The
Internet is all about new ideas meshing with the old, of
finding a new way to express yourself. Take the language of
expression developed for E-Mail, Smileys, they are a way to
show how you feel using typing characters. Lingo
the language of chat, is a combination of acronyms
and smileys to animate your discussions in chat forums. The
Internet is a whole new way of accessing information and
communicating, but there is no reason to be intimidated by
the Internet because with a good browser such as Netscape 2.0 to help you
it is easy to use and tons of fun. Even in chatting you will
not stand out because new chatters pop up daily! There is
even a Internet word for beginners, "newbie". If you go into
a chat forum and explain that you are a "newbie" everyone
will show extra patience and try to be helpful and explain
the process. People remember what it was like when they
first came on-line, and the help they received from
veterans. Likely it was not so long ago that they were
newbies themselves! So just go in and announce yourself and
most likely you will be welcomed warmly! Chatters are
generally a friendly, open, hospitable group, otherwise they
would not be there because chatting can be slow and time
consuming requiring patience and tolerance. You will
occasionally run into a rude chatter no doubt but everyone
has bad days so don't hold it against them or chatting in
general. Just like in real life you may also find a few
people that make you wonder if they are really crazy or just
trying to be offensive. Take all this in stride and don't
judge the Internet chatting experience by a few bad apples,
there are lots of wierdos in your real life experiences too!
Just remember that all chat sites are not created equal so
you have to be wise when scouting out a place to spend your
time. Then before you know it you will be exchanging family
photographs and sending e-mail to your chat friends on a
regular basis. It becomes as common as calling up your
neighbor on the telephone, you'll wonder how you ever lived
without Internet, e-mail and chatting! Trust me! I know! So
if you have never chatted stop by one of my favorite spots and
say hi. You may just make a friend for life.
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