While IRC networks had been around since damn near the inception of what we now call the internet, theirs was a fantastic implementation of a chat room. In fact I never saw any that was implemented as well as
s5 and
Olivia did. Having message board groups integrated as individual channels that only members of that group could go into was one of if not the best attribute. While I don't know for certain that they were the first to come up with that, I've never seen anything that suggests they weren't. it, along with many other solutions were fantastic innovations.
For the first while, first few years at least, there were always the actual staff members who ran this site in there at all times watching over it. When they weren't watching over it there were other people (usually SGs) there to moderate it. They'd kick out anyone who didn't work to keep the flow of chat going smooth, anyone who was being a dick, excessively creepy, etc. After a while they stopped though. Probably like 2004 or something.
While sg did have webcams initially, they were simple pictures, not live streaming video. A webcam application would take a picture of the video stream your webcam was making, create a jpg picture, then upload it to suicidegirls using ftp. If you were watching someone's cam, it would refresh the image every 15 seconds. If you wanted to see someone make a face, hold up a picture of you, flash their boobs/butt/etc., they had to stand there for about 30 seconds essentially motionless waiting for their webcam app to take the cap, upload it to sg, and send it to the person they were chatting with. A very different situation to modern day webcamming programs (and what SG is using as I write this.)
In 2005, as part of their constant ongoing site development regime they had to take it down for a bit. It was quite some time, in fact. A little under a year. While SGs chat had been up and running it had made a solid following among quite a few people. During the time that they were working to upgrade the site, a huge void was created. A fellow by the name
trilobyte asked an admin of an IRC network that he knew if they'd mind starting up a #suicidegirls channel, which they agreed to and so for quite a few months we would go in there. Of course without a direct link to the chat room like when it was integrated into SG there wasn't near as many people going in there and it was a much much more personal experience. In fact the only ones who would go in there would be myself,
Sin,
Cherries,
trilobyte,
pyropixie,
punk,
Yuriel,
NevynII,
MrTom, and a few more that I can't remember. I would only guess about 5 more would have gone in there with any regularity. It was just too difficult for your average non-tech-oriented person to get set up.
While chat was down trilobyte got zotted. Usually when that would happen no one was ever really notified as to why or what happened (years later he said while talking to me on aim that they thought it was some noob staff member who did it. Who knows though? We're talking about a lot of years ago. At any rate, with the Katatonia.WyldRyde.org still going on we were all still able to chat normally. None of us really knew what was up or anything, and it really didn't matter. We all still drank insane amounts of alcohol, smoked insane amounts of pot (not me, of course. I was never into pot) jammed out to tunes, checked out naked chicks, etc. same as always.
Man we drank alot during that time. Not just me, all of us would be drunk as fuck the whole damn time. Even without the noobs it still was good times.
In 2006 the website development was finally at a place where the tech staff were comfortable releasing it. They finally let it loose a day after the rest of the site went live with massive updates. While most members were most interested in the main HTML part of the site, those true chatters were of course interested with one thing, chat. When it came back much jubilation happened. `Cept for trilo, haha. He had been zotted and wasn't going to make a noob account. A few of us still went into the Katatonia.WyldRyde.org chat room for a while, but after I think like two weeks it was just like me and him in there and I was like "yea, we both got aim if it's just gonna be an IM" so we bid adieu to the interim chat as we called it and it was on like donkey kong for SG chat.
The technology used was vastly different from what was used before. In fact there were a lot of things that were very different. For one, chat was hosted by a third party. This is important because suicidegirls, from about a year er so since it's inception, was always at the forefront of web technology. Putting chat into someone else's hands meant that they also put the technological developments into the hands of a third party. In fact shortly after implementing the userplane system it was bought by AOL. That kindo made some of us cock our heads to the side and go "ehh?!"
Anyway, it was a very different technology used than before. Using flash meant that the actual program that ran on people's computers was porky and slow. It actually demanded most of us to upgrade our computers to the latest technology just to use it. Of course most people just wouldn't use it, but those of us who are troo did so (I still as I'm writing this am using that computer at home as my primary system. It still works fantastic for every computing task I need.)
Now the biggest difference of course is the webcams were integrated straight into the interface, directly below the text window. What's more, they weren't simple jpg pictures, they were MPEG streaming media and response time was immediate. It's still to this day, even with hardly no updates at all to the technology, some of the smoothest and lowest latency video streams out there provided you're not using an underpowered computer (such as a netbook or cell phone or something.)
Having webcams and audio, with such low latency meant that we could actually communicate online as if we were face to face. We would have video conferences nightly and just drink, chat, goof around, and have fun with eachother same as if we were right there in person. While videoconferencing was nothing new, having such a slick and easy to use videoconferencing app integrated to a site like suicidegirls with it's massive userbase and community was something that was totally unique and a quantum leap in human interaction. As far as I and everyone else I've talked to know there was no other websites with a chat-based community anywhere near as advanced as here on suicidegirls.
Now that's not to say that there weren't other uses for chat. In fact having real-time video and audio meant that every pervert on sg had an outlet to get their sex-oriented tasks on and had an almost endless audience to do it in front of. Men, women, couples, you name it. This was in stark contrast to what was happening before on SG. Sure people would televise their sexual activities on their webcams, but without the cams being integrated into the chat room there wasn't much talk of it and it'd go more or less unnoticed. Certainly compared to chat in the userplane era.
Still, this new chat system was on the same website that'd been around for many years and had developed it's own community. A community that tried to self-limit the perviness of the members. And on the other hand, it was a title 18 site meaning that many considered it a porn site like any other. So you had people of various levels of pervert level if you will. After a few weeks, maybe even days, it started to become clear that cliques of various levels of perviness were being created. Sometimes these cliques would clash, often in dramatic fashion. This has continued to this day. In fact, very little has changed amongst the community from those first few weeks in mid 2006. The names always change, but the basics of the community haven't changed much at all.
About the biggest change that was made is regarding the chatters group. In 2004 a group was created to discuss chat and chatting. It was a private group, one that was quite difficult to get into. In fact I never even was admitted into it myself, thus I don't have too much to say myself about that particular group.
Once SGs new flash-based chat room with integrated cams went live, as I mentioned it changed how many people used it. Also with the frequent dramatic clashes of the various perv-level-cliques, most of the original bunch who'd grown to love the previous chat environment just stopped coming in. As a result, they stopped using the related group meant to discuss it. Meanwhile, there was an even stronger community being created with the more immersive chat environment. A group was needed more than ever, yet no one who used the current system was in the old chatters group. Quite a few times people had tried to make another group, but since there already was a group, and since (sensibly) duplicate groups are not allowed, none of them were approved.
After a few months, a fella by the name of
greggster wanted to make a get together at his new place as a housewarming party. About half a dozen of us flew out to bum-fuck Kenosha Wisconsin to have one of the most epic parties ever. While I was out there I looked around, seeing the people who'd showed up. While just normal every day people, there were some consistencies. For one, we all were fairly tight knit into the community that had created itself. Also we were all obsessed with it. Whenever we would travel we always carried our laptops around with us JUST so we could get into SG chat. The community that had survived was all of a fairly high pervertedness level. None of us really got out much. We spent most of our time at home staring at a computer. When we did get out, we had a lot of pent up pressures to unleash, still, we knew how to party.
On the plane ride back I realized just how significant and unique this community had become. When I got back I wrote the owner of the old chatters group a letter that, at the time I wrote it I was all proud of. Later I'd reread it and thought "damn, this is really rude. I can't believe they didn't just tell you to shut up and block you." What
did happen was the original group was renamed to Old Skool Chatters, and a new Chatters group was created. I had asked in my little letter that
Sin be the owner, but they still put it in my name. I didn't think it was that bad of a thing though, being in my name. I knew that no one was going to be as dedicated (read obsessed) with putting as much effort into making it a success as I was.
Once that group was made the community that had been created really took off. Unfortunately most all of the documentation of how successful it was is confined within that private group. Even more unfortunate is how exclusive the group became, even with my enthusiastic mentionings that it really shouldn't. I mean this is a unique opportunity. The future of how people will meet and develop relationships are all documented reasonably well in there and there's a lot that can be learned by it. All of our mistakes we've made, all of our successes, so much can be learned.
Regardless of whether if someone were to take a scientific approach to all the knowledge we've acquired so far on this new means of developing human relations online, I'm extremely happy to have been involved in it for the past decade. I haven't even touched on exactly how it has, but suffice to say that
nothing else has had as profound an impact on my life than just going into that lil chat room. One that was resisted from the get-go and might have never even come to fruition.
