MSN Rant

// MSN Messenger - what once was...

So for those of you that don't know, MSN was one of the first major "chat" software that rippled through my primary school and then HS years. Sure, there was IRC, and many others, but MSN was what my friends used.

I look back upon it with some fond memories... A few things that stand out to me was that...

1. people went offline (either legitimately or to be invisble to someone) - they'd dc, or the phone would ring and boot them off (28k sucked, man). But it was an interesting concept, being offline, or unavailble, so you'd have to text them to get on MSN (probably using your nokia 3310, and paying 20c for 160 chars). Or they could be online with thier hip-top slide, or razor (i think??)
2. the random group chats - my god - someone would invite all their friends, and then their friends would invite their friends, and it would get out of control. Then someone would nudge the chat, and everyones windows would shake (like legit, the window would move n pixels left, down, right, up)
3. You had cryptic names, or the lyrics of your song (e.g. ,.-~*'¨¯¨'*·~-.¸-(_ playa _)-,.-~*'¨¯¨'*·~-.¸ or d(-_-)b the music sounds better with you... )
4. I know discord has it, but you could have the name of the song you were playing, and it'd never have the right name because you got it from somewhere dodgy¹
5. Custom emojis - and you could remap the keys - kind of like discord, but I don't think there was any limit to the file size (or not that I experienced), it was also easier to "steal" them from others (the group chats helped this - a lot).
6. Most often u wud typ lyk dis cos it was faster 2 typ - so ur msg was read soonr² - probably stemmed from the 160 char limit of text messages (or you had to pay for 2 texts at 22c each, the fuck??).

I do miss those days, I'm not sure if the chats have been preserved or backed up somewhere (not that I'd want to read it). But I feel like in todays world, the kids won't be able to experience that same feeling, or they think they will, but someone, somewhere would have copy, or a transcript of some chat logs, or photos of things they shouldn't. I'm not saying I want the kids to be innocent, they're kids, they should get into some trouble (but nothing serious, as adults we have a duty of care). But that's something for another post (when I get to it)³. I'm also not going to say that we/I didn't do stupid things/make regrets when I was young either. I'd like to think that I at least learned from them, either by learning hot things can burn me, or by still unsuccessfully repressing memories decades later and living with the constant reminders in my own mind⁴.

There would be heaps more that comes to mind, but that's all that is coming to me now. I'll be honest, the time I am writing this at (2am Saturday morning) was typically the time I'd be winding up from MSN, wrecked from a big day at school, followed by some CS (1.6), UT99, or some F.E.A.R. and then shit posting in group chats.