instant messenger nerds are a funny lot
I just talked about modern social media security stupidity, and had the thought to check what's going on with the ancient instant messenger stuff.
How ancient am I talking about? Late '90s. There are instant messenger nerds out there who are bound and determined to recreate that Windows 95 instant messaging experience. As in using Windows 95 with specific software, such as ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, whatever, take your pick.
Why would anybody even bother trying to make all that ancient crap work again? You can probably guess the answer.
It's nostalgia, 100%. Nostalgia is the thing that drives people to buy things like a Pet Rock, board games (which I admit are still cool and always will be), old style electronic handheld game, and so on. It's also the thing that drives the desire to use old crusty messaging software on old crusty operating systems.
What the nerds are chasing after can be broken into three parts. The first two I've already mentioned, that being the old OS and old messaging software. The third part is act of chatting with other people using a PC.
Instant messaging is not something you do on a phone. If you want to chat on a phone, that's as easy as sending a text message and Bob's your uncle. Or, if you want a "chat room" on phone, that is what group messaging is for.
A true old style late '90s instant messaging experience is not a mobile thing. Rather, it's about using very specific software using specific hardware in an environment where you are committing to the act, so to speak.
There have been and still are a few independent projects going in an effort to recreate the old ICQ/AIM/YIM/MSN experience. For example, some people put up servers running the OSCAR protocol for AOL Instant Messenger use. Servers like this stick around for a while, but then eventually shut down.
The shutdown reason is more or less always the same. Cost. The server starts free at first, costs add up, server operator asks for money from its users to keep it going, nobody pays, server shuts down.
IRC has always been the better option. If you're into old style internet ways of chat, internet relay chat is the only thing worth using because it's text-based. If you can get that crusty old PC connected to the internet, you most likely can get IRC working.
Even a DEC VT220 from the 1980s can do IRC. It just needs to connect to a Linux box. Use a USB-to-serial adapter and a null modem cable, configure the terminal for 9600 or 19200 baud, run a getty service on the Linux box for managing terminal connections, connect, use a terminal based IRC client like irssi and ta-da, chat. It's completely GUI-less, but it works.
Also, when popular YouTube tech nerds want to do a nerdy retro chat thing, IRC is what they use. None of them say "add me to your AIM buddy list", but instead point to a IRC server and instruct to join their IRC channel instead.
The look, sounds and feel of those old IM clients is strong for some. Seeing that old AOL Running Man icon or the Yahoo emoticons (which I admit were some of the best ever made) brings back nice memories of a simpler, kinder internet.
But at the same time, those same old IM clients were designed to use proprietary protocols and centralized servers. Better to just let that all go and use IRC instead, if for no other reason that it works on more computers.
With IRC, somebody using Windows 11 can chat with somebody else using an Amiga. Or OS/2 Warp. Or Mac OS 8. Or MS-DOS. Or whatever. You can't do that with old instant messaging because it's too proprietary. But you can with IRC.
Published 2025 Oct 31