On July 17th, 2008, the function officially known as "Community Chat" was unleashed upon the anticipatory public of theOtaku. Since then, many things have changed but so many more have remained the same. As someone who has experienced it all, I offer my thoughts on the matter and what a ride it has been - so far.
Meant to do this last year and just completely forgot about it.
Ode to Chat: A Two Year Retrospect
I had forgotten when Chat launched. All I knew is that it was in “July sometime”, leaning towards the latter half because it was sometime after I got into Doctor Who but before Mystery Science Theater 3000. I wasn’t willing to go sifting through the archives of the news section nor poke around Adam’s journal (because who knows what horrors lie beneath), but I did remember that I had made exactly two things to commemorate the event.
First there was that eCard of the 10th Doctor making his “o_O” face, since the project had been mysteriously flying around as “Project o_O” before being announced as a chatroom function. That came from July 12th. Then there was that picture I made of me eating a mango with the cutting knife so that my fingers wouldn’t be sticky and I could type on the keyboard – July 18th.
Guess what, July 18th is today.
So if memory serves me correctly, Chat launched the evening of July 17th, 2008. It was sort of like waiting for the launch of myOtaku or, to serve more recent customers, the launch of Version Vibrant. You knew it was coming, but when, that was a killer. What made Chat even more of a killer was that you knew the day it was going to launch, but precisely when was up to anybody’s guess.
I think around 8:17pm, Sangome gave me the IM: “IT LAUNCHED”.
A frantic mad dash ended up with me entering the brand new world of Chat. First the frame loaded, and then the words greeted me: You entered Otaku Lobby. Room topic is: General discussion headquarters. They would soon become words permanently ingrained in my brain, etched into a residency that wasn’t going to be evicted anytime soon.
