On Using the IRC and Learning Something New

Nov 3, 2023

This isn't a quicklog.

I am nearly 50. It's shocking to see that number like that. For some reason, it doesn't feel real. This number brings with it a lot feelings and emotions, both positive and negative, but I'm not going to get into that today. I bring it up because I have always been a very private person in my life. I, generally, don't have a compulsion of needing to associate with anyone outside of work. I, for the most part, have always felt a little awkward around other people, but I also didn't want people knowing me in my private life. When social media sites and apps started to pop up, I tried some of them, but I quickly realized that they weren't for me. They creeped me out a little bit.

Then I stumbled onto gemini and the tilde communities. I wanted to see what it was like. I saw a video with James Tomasino giving talk about the small web (2022 - Rocking the Web Bloat: Modern Gopher, Gemini, and the Small Internet), and he was inviting people to check it out. He talked about the Tildeverse and how that community uses IRC. I was curious, and I thought I could just lurk around in one of those IRC channels and see what the conversations were like. The Tildeverse website pointed me to an IRC webproxy and I logged in with the default name of "Kiwi"-something.

A ctrl-c member greeted me there. When I mentioned I was trying learn more about gemini and the tilde communities, they suggested I try ctrl-c.club. That was my first interaction on the IRC or any chat, which didn't involve my immediate family. It was very friendly and inviting. So, here I am now, looking at different sites and capsules, and trying to learn how to use the command line in linux, trying to understand certificates and how they're made, typing in gemtex, and setting up Irssi locally on my computer, amongst many other things. It's been a struggle.

I started to feel lonely, while working on my own capsule, reading the capsules of others, and watching the posts on bbs.geminispace.org. Yes, it's very unlike me. As I was working on my capsule one night, I set up a terminal to the IRC ctrl-c channel to "listen in", so that I might learn something new. Out of frustration, I wanted to complain how difficult it was using vim. I just wanted to complain, so I did, on the chat. A ctrl-c member reached out to me, and started offering me tips. We chatted for a long time, and I learn more there than I did trying to learn on my own. I got two important things out that conversation: I need to read a whole lot more about the commands (man pages, help files); and it's invaluable to have someone to talk to. You learn more, and you find something you shouldn't have to live without: a friend.