Hanging Out in IRC Channels With mIRC

IRC, short for Internet Relay Chat, was a system of chat servers where people joined channels to talk about everything from video games to programming, and it was created in August 1988. Channels had names that started with a pound sign, like #music or #help, and anyone in a channel could see everything typed there. On Windows, most people connected through a program called mIRC, which came out in 1995. IRC was the backbone of a lot of early online communities, and it's still around today.

Where IRC came from

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen at the University of Oulu in Finland in August 1988. He wanted something to replace an older chat program on a local bulletin board system. The first IRC server ran at the university, and by November 1988 IRC had spread across the internet. By the middle of 1989, there were about 40 servers.

It grew from there into separate networks, each a group of servers linked together. EFnet formed in 1990. Undernet split off from EFnet in 1992, and DALnet split from Undernet in 1994. Each network had its own channels and regulars, and people often stuck with one for years.

In May 1993, the rules for how IRC worked were written up in an official internet standard, RFC 1459, so anyone could build software for it. Gamers later had their own favorite, QuakeNet, which had about 240,000 users in 2004.

How did IRC work?

IRC worked by connecting your computer to a server, which passed your messages to everyone else in the same channel. You picked a nickname, connected to a network and typed commands that started with a slash. /join #channelname put you in a room. /msg sent someone a private message. /nick changed your name, if the new one wasn't taken.

Each channel had operators, usually called ops, who had an @ sign next to their names. Ops could kick people out, ban them or set the channel topic, and they could hand their powers to someone else. Getting ops in a popular channel meant something. Getting kicked by one, often with a snippy message, was how a lot of new people learned the rules.

Nothing on the screen had a picture, an avatar or a profile page behind it. You got a nickname and whatever the person typed, scrolling up as fast as people could type. Compared with ICQ and its "uh-oh" sound, where a small list of people you knew popped up one at a time, a busy channel felt like standing in a train station.

mIRC

Most people on Windows didn't connect to IRC directly. They used mIRC, a program written by British programmer Khaled Mardam-Bey and released on February 28, 1995. It gave IRC a window with your channels along the top, the people on the right and a box to type in.

mIRC was shareware, which meant you could try it free for 30 days and then were supposed to register it. Plenty of people kept clicking past the reminder for years and never paid a cent, which says more about us than about mIRC. It was downloaded more than 40 million times from CNET's Download.com, and in 2003 it ranked among the top 10 internet programs.

mIRC also had its own scripting language. People wrote scripts that changed colors, added sounds, greeted friends automatically or ran games in a channel. Some scripts were helpful. Others mostly made the text blink. Typing a :) in the middle of all that text has its own backstory in where emoticons came from.

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Netsplits, bots and channel life

Because IRC networks were made of many linked servers, the link between two of them sometimes broke. That was a netsplit. Suddenly, half the people in your channel vanished at once, then came flooding back a few minutes later when the servers reconnected. The screen filled with quit messages first, then a wall of joins. After the second or third time, nobody panicked.

Many channels also had bots, programs that sat in the channel and did jobs. Some kept the channel open and gave ops to the right people. Others ran trivia games, told the time or remembered when someone was last seen. Regulars knew the bots as well as the people, and some of the old bots outlasted the friends who first set them up.

Each channel had its own personality. Some were friendly and full of jokes. Others were strict about staying on topic. A few were known for running off newcomers who asked a question that was already in the channel's FAQ, usually within a minute of them joining.

IRC and the news

IRC was also used during big world events. During the Gulf War in 1991, and the attempted coup in the Soviet Union that same year, people used IRC to share news in real time, sometimes when other sources were cut off. It was one of the first times people saw how fast information could travel online.

Is IRC still around?

Yes, IRC is still around, though it's much smaller than it used to be. At its peak, around 2004 and 2005, about 10 million people were using it at the same time. Between 2003 and 2012 it lost about 60 percent of its users. Many of them moved to Yahoo Messenger and other instant messengers, then to forums and later apps like Discord. In 2021, a big group of users moved from the Freenode network to a new one called Libera Chat, which quickly became the largest IRC network.

Things people remember

• Typing /join and landing in the middle of a fast conversation
• Getting kicked from a channel for asking something "in the FAQ"
• Someone's mIRC script greeting everyone with rainbow text
• Watching half the channel disappear in a netsplit
• Being too nervous to talk in a channel for the first week
• Finally getting an @ in the channel you hung out in

Channels and cribs

IRC had the energy of a room where everyone was talking at once, a bit like AOL chat rooms and the message boards people spent hours on. FriendCrib has forums and groups where people can gather around a topic, without anyone needing to remember a slash command.

Get a crib and find your channel.