Less than a month after Chat's launch, I was standing in a football field, watching the sun go down, a bass drum strapped to my chest and waiting for the director to tell us when to start. It was band camp, and I was bored, leaving me plenty of time to think.
I love theOtaku beyond normal human measure. It is truly my second home and my base of operations on the internet. We, as members and as friends, also wield influence over each other, getting people to watch an anime or a movie or read a book that we may not have done without some pushing. Yet sometimes, extra pushing is nice, and really, when it comes to watching something, it’s more fun with others.
Chat was still fresh, still new, still exciting, but I was thinking a bit beyond that. I had just gotten into MST3K and enjoyed watching it with friends over IM. There had to be a way to expand upon that, and the method seemed pretty obvious.
A post on the Watercooler, a test-run, and some refining later, the first of several weekly Chat events launched. Nearly two years later, I look at it and go “wut”. I look at the importance these weekly events have grown into and I go “wut”. Then I see that there are no intentions of stopping and just start balking at it all.
Weekly gatherings and simultaneous events don’t have to be planned, and oftentimes they’re not. Right now, with Comedy Central airing new episodes of Futurama on Thursdays, a bunch of us just hang out in the Lobby and ad-lib along with the show. I have memories of just myself and Shinmaru watching the All Stars baseball game with no one understand what on earth we’re sobbing about. And can anyone forget the Olympics that have now graced Chat twice (the summer games coming about right when Chat launched and the winter being just a few months ago) and the antics from that?
This goes back to the core of what Chat is: instantaneous interaction. The good times we have, whether they be through daily banter or these real-time viewings, leave many of us aching to actually someday hang out with one other in that reclusive world known as “real life”. Its one thing to interact through text, but it is entirely another to actually physically be there and hanging out.
But in the very least, we have this.
