It is hard to overstate how influential IRC have been in my life. I met my best friend on IRC in 1999. He found his wife on IRC a few years later.

We followed the towers collapse on 9/11 over IRC in a blizzard of all-caps screams and links to TV screenshots and RealVideo clips. It was hours before the government of my country had lifted the embargo on the media to report it. I called my friends and family and everyone was just incredulous, it sounded like a dumb thriller plot.

I got a job offer and moved countries via IRC, then again a few years later. We watched people join, age and disappear. One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts; its topic had been set by a man who had passed away.

> One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts

I remember the collective obituary moment when somebody's bouncer quit for good, almost two years after the person's passing.

You just brought back a core memory. Mass netsplits followed by a few minutes of "wtf", and then some new yorkers who had bouncers not routing through the WTC jumping on channel to let us know what was going on.

I was, and still am, on the other side of the world and lost a few people I talked to every day during that event.

> One of the channels I am still on is full of VPS hosted ghosts;

This hits hard. I might be one of those ghosts. When I last checked in, I saw the same in virtually all the channels that were once important to me. My bouncer is still running, I suppose I'm not quite ready to let go yet.