Interesting IRC

Over the decades, social networking on the internet has undergone very extreme and rapid changes. One of the earlier forms of social network would be none other than the traditional chat rooms – the equivalent “Facebook” or “Twitter” our older friends or cousins used to subscribe to when they were teenagers. One of the classic examples of these chat rooms would be the Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It was extremely popular. Was.

Just like our MSN messenger and Facebook chat now, the IRC was designed to allow real-time, synchronous chats. Users have the option to either engage in group communications, aka channels, or one to one communications via private message.

I personally have had little experience with this classic form of social network, but I did hear a few funny stories from friends and family members who used to be loyal subscribers! Unlike Facebook or even Friendster, the traditional IRC did not have the application for users to put up their photos. Hence, you really do not know how exactly every person in the chat rooms look like. This could be the reason why it was really common for people, especially teenagers, to ask one another in the chat rooms to describe his or her appearance.

Now, this is the amusing part. From what I have heard, it seemed like there were basically only a few criteria for a guy to be deemed as “good-looking” by many Singaporean teenage girls then. So my friend was talking to this girl on IRC a couple of years back, and she asked him if he is good-looking. As usual, he humbly, and partially jokingly said that he looks really ugly. The conversation then continued as shown below (as accurate as what my friend can remember after these years):

Girl: Hmm…ur hairstyle lyk wad one? (Translation: What is your hairstyle?)

Friend: Center parting loh

Girl: Oic…do euux wear specs? (Translation: Oh I see, do you wear spectacles?)

Friend: No leh why?

Girl: Eh lyk dat shld be nort bad wad… whr got ugly? Lolx (;
(Translation: In that case, you shouldn’t look too bad right?)

Friend: HAHA

Me: HAHAHAHAHA

So what were the 2 criteria to be deemed as handsome on IRC?
1) Centre parting hairstyle
2) Does not wear spectacles













The funny thing is that my friend has actually encountered such judgments quite a few times from different people. This really let us see how naïve some users of IRC were at that time. This could very well be one of the reasons why there were cases of teenage girls being cheated into meeting some 40 years old man from the chat rooms. But again, I must also make it clear that the above example is not in any way intended to generalize or insult users of IRC. It is nothing more than a funny story.

Upon writing all these, it suddenly came to me that the story is so amusing only because of the underrated fact that technology has improved so drastically over the years. Unlike in the past, we can now easily see a photo of someone else, and we are so used to it. I realized that I almost could not imagine myself asking someone to describe his/her looks, only because there is no such need now. But again, at that time, how else could one get an idea of the physical appearance of the other party in the chat room other than asking for a verbal description? The girl in the above story could then be very well compared to those today who believe that the “handsome” guy on Facebook is putting up his real photo.