Question

What did I read before I read blogs?

I've just opened up Syndirella, as I usually do despite the fact that it's buggy as hell and usually crashes either just itself or my entire computer before it's managed to actually aggregate anything.

I've read all the blogs on my list that have updated since earlier this afternoon. Via my browser I've been to all the blogs I read that don't have RSS feeds just in case they'd updated, and checked some of those that do have RSS feeds that Syndirella had said hadn't updated, just in case Syndirella was lying.

Now I've exhausted my list of regular blog reads, and I'm left wondering what on earth used to steal my online time before I discovered the Joy of Blogging. Before the blog, before Sweet Addy, before the Guardian… I know I used to spend a lot of time online, but I can't for the life of me remember why.

Right back in the very beginning, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in the Yahoo Books & Lit chat room. That was long before the teenagers had discovered the internet, of course, and most of the conversation there actually was roughtly about books and literature. Or at least used words. Once the ASLers turned up, we all buggered off to E-Groups, which then got eaten by Yahoo so we ended up back where we started.

I still have my very first avatar – it's still valid and I still use it on a regular basis.

I remember really clearly the day I was introduced to Yahoo chat. I was temping for a company called DE Shaw in the City in between Christmas and New Year 1997. I was working on reception but as most people had the time off, there was bugger all to do. The office manager came over to me and asked me if I'd brought a book to read. I'd admitted that, in fact, I'd been expecting to have been expected to actually work, so no, I hadn't. So she showed me Yahoo Chat and told me to log in and chill out.

I still use my Yahoo identity all the time now, despite the fact that Yahoo have gone from the cheeky underdog to corporate whores over the last six years. (Pretty much the same line that Google appear to be taking, if you ask me.)

A Books & Lit splinter group formed called Gorpies which was quite a large part of my life for quite a long time. Eventually, though, it became time to move on (amazing how it only takes one irritating old cow to ruin a whole email group), and I stopped chatting in Gorpies altogether. I'm still in touch with a few people from back then, actually, although I don't think I'd go into a public chat room now if you paid me.

Funny, though, how six years on the internet seems like such an age. My life has changed tremendously, the internet has changed tremendously, but the one thing that's stayed the same is that I have met and continue to meet some really cool and interesting people here in this virtual universe and thence later in person. Not sure how many, but it's a lot.

And so far, only one nutter out of the whole bunch.

Of course, I'm quite expecting that to change in November…