It's IRC, but you get to be a cat!
October 9, 2023 10:14 PM Subscribe
Unlike every other IRC client, where communication is done purely in text form, Comic Chat allows you to assume an avatar and use it to chat in the form of an ongoing comic strip. Every line you say can be punctuated with specific emotions/poses. It still works perfectly to this very day. Comic Chat is arguably one of the greatest communication methods out there for autistic people (if not the greatest). It provides all of the advantanges of being able to hear your conversational partner's words and see their facial expressions and body language, without being overwhelming and while still allowing one plenty of time to process everything.
OH MY GOD
This is how Jerk City/Bonequest has been made since 1998.
A lot of things that didn't make sense when I was a wee lad suddenly are more clear now.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:27 PM on October 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is how Jerk City/Bonequest has been made since 1998.
A lot of things that didn't make sense when I was a wee lad suddenly are more clear now.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:27 PM on October 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
This brought back long-buried memories. What a delight to find this is still being used.
posted by entity447b at 12:39 AM on October 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by entity447b at 12:39 AM on October 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Like, kill MS Teams and replace it with this immediately.
posted by parm at 4:33 AM on October 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by parm at 4:33 AM on October 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
The concept is obviously very neat. The hall of Fame/fun examples/random selection of channel moments at the bottom.... well.
I really love the mishmash of avatar art styles though
posted by Baethan at 4:33 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I really love the mishmash of avatar art styles though
posted by Baethan at 4:33 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I remember what a pain this was to the rest of the IRC community. Anyone not using MS Comic Chat would get constantly bombarded with all the gibberish-looking control codes used by the software to tell other instances of MS Comic Chat what image to display. This would trash terminal emulators (in 1996 a not-small proportion of IRC users were using dialup shell accounts, particularly outside of the US) and made life miserable for anyone using a text-to-speech screen reader. It was common practice to instantly kick people out who were using MS Comic Chat, which was pretty easy to tell because the software would "announce" itself by spamming the channel automatically upon entry with lines like "(nickname) appears as (something)"
Doing a little research, it looks like at the time there was one version of the IRC protocol that supported a non-invasive way for transmitting this information, which MS Comic Chat *did* respect. I guess the real problem was that Microsoft allowed the application to fall back into very disruptive behavior on servers that didn't implement it's preferred way of sending control codes. I also remember there was a big debate over whether other IRC clients should just ignore MS Comic Chat's control codes (Microsoft wasn't the only one not playing nice, mIRC also started implementing it's own control codes for formatting text) and given that it was the middle of the browser wars, the consensus was to not let individual application developers extend the protocol in ways that only benefited themselves.
There was also more than a little gatekeeping going on, since MS Comic Chat users often had no idea what they were connecting to and tended to be much younger than the average IRC user.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on October 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
Doing a little research, it looks like at the time there was one version of the IRC protocol that supported a non-invasive way for transmitting this information, which MS Comic Chat *did* respect. I guess the real problem was that Microsoft allowed the application to fall back into very disruptive behavior on servers that didn't implement it's preferred way of sending control codes. I also remember there was a big debate over whether other IRC clients should just ignore MS Comic Chat's control codes (Microsoft wasn't the only one not playing nice, mIRC also started implementing it's own control codes for formatting text) and given that it was the middle of the browser wars, the consensus was to not let individual application developers extend the protocol in ways that only benefited themselves.
There was also more than a little gatekeeping going on, since MS Comic Chat users often had no idea what they were connecting to and tended to be much younger than the average IRC user.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on October 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
And getting back to the browser wars, we honestly thought MS Comic Chat was Microsoft trying to appropriate another piece of "the Internet" which is definitely amusing in hindsight.
Nowadays Microsoft would just spin up it's own network of chat servers (i.e. Teams) without even breaking a sweat, but back then the prospect that Microsoft would somehow want to co-opt how people connect to a hodgepodge of IRC servers being run (sometimes in secret) by volunteers on university and corporate networks seemed very real. That's how crazy it was in the 1990s.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:12 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Nowadays Microsoft would just spin up it's own network of chat servers (i.e. Teams) without even breaking a sweat, but back then the prospect that Microsoft would somehow want to co-opt how people connect to a hodgepodge of IRC servers being run (sometimes in secret) by volunteers on university and corporate networks seemed very real. That's how crazy it was in the 1990s.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:12 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wish my waifu was real
Ouch.
There was also more than a little gatekeeping going on, since MS Comic Chat users often had no idea what they were connecting to and tended to be much younger than the average IRC user.
You make gatekeeping sound like it's a bad thing! Don't you remember setting up bot armies to stem the flow of never ending toxic shit? The biggest servers were absolute nightmares. Efnet was the reason 4chan just made me shrug and think of course.
IRC is the reason I never joined Twitter. They'll never be able to moderate it properly. Never never never. The assholes will take over and wreck the place.
The control codes used here would get you kicked from my channels. Doing it repeatedly would get you banned.
And no one cares what song you are listening to!
posted by adept256 at 6:30 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ouch.
There was also more than a little gatekeeping going on, since MS Comic Chat users often had no idea what they were connecting to and tended to be much younger than the average IRC user.
You make gatekeeping sound like it's a bad thing! Don't you remember setting up bot armies to stem the flow of never ending toxic shit? The biggest servers were absolute nightmares. Efnet was the reason 4chan just made me shrug and think of course.
IRC is the reason I never joined Twitter. They'll never be able to moderate it properly. Never never never. The assholes will take over and wreck the place.
The control codes used here would get you kicked from my channels. Doing it repeatedly would get you banned.
And no one cares what song you are listening to!
posted by adept256 at 6:30 AM on October 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Like, kill MS Teams and replace it with this immediately.
Maybe you could successfully navigate work conversations within the visual context of a Jerk City script but I’m pretty sure I’d be immediately fired for yelling about dongs.
posted by babelfish at 6:54 AM on October 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Maybe you could successfully navigate work conversations within the visual context of a Jerk City script but I’m pretty sure I’d be immediately fired for yelling about dongs.
posted by babelfish at 6:54 AM on October 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
The only valid use of the Comic Sans font. I loved this program.
Some trivia: Comic Chat was a Microsoft Research project, afterwards the team wrote a paper for ACM SIGGRAPH 1996 about the origins and how they accomplished certain things.
If you're an 80's arcade coin-op buff you might recognize one of those authors/developers, Tim Skelly, who wrote a number of classic games for Cinematronics and Gottlieb/Ratslym.
The Jerkcity (now Bonequest, content mildly offensive/NSFW) web blog was also powered by Comic Chat. One of the core people involved with Jerkcity was Michael Lopp, who still uses his handle "Rands" on his Rands in Repose blog.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:58 AM on October 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Some trivia: Comic Chat was a Microsoft Research project, afterwards the team wrote a paper for ACM SIGGRAPH 1996 about the origins and how they accomplished certain things.
If you're an 80's arcade coin-op buff you might recognize one of those authors/developers, Tim Skelly, who wrote a number of classic games for Cinematronics and Gottlieb/Ratslym.
The Jerkcity (now Bonequest, content mildly offensive/NSFW) web blog was also powered by Comic Chat. One of the core people involved with Jerkcity was Michael Lopp, who still uses his handle "Rands" on his Rands in Repose blog.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:58 AM on October 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Wow this is one heck of a blast from the past
Thanks for posting this!
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:06 AM on October 10, 2023
Thanks for posting this!
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:06 AM on October 10, 2023
When the Freenode IRC network was imploding in 2021, someone generated comic chat versions of the admin channels, and so these characters from the 90's were ranting about the Joseon empire and their $million investment, while trying to deploy orwelian doublespeak. Peak internet in a way.
posted by joeyh at 7:18 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by joeyh at 7:18 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
The only valid use of the Comic Sans font. I loved this program.
My first experience of Comic Sans was at the ACM SIGCHI 1996 conference where David Kurlander and colleagues from Microsoft Research published this paper on their new Comic Chat app.
The Palace was another interesting - but much less minimalist - app from that era. An contemporary attempt to update apps like this would be interesting because there is no doubt a lot that could be done with automated character generation now that would not have been possible then. Can't say it would be better - just different.
posted by rongorongo at 7:46 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
My first experience of Comic Sans was at the ACM SIGCHI 1996 conference where David Kurlander and colleagues from Microsoft Research published this paper on their new Comic Chat app.
The Palace was another interesting - but much less minimalist - app from that era. An contemporary attempt to update apps like this would be interesting because there is no doubt a lot that could be done with automated character generation now that would not have been possible then. Can't say it would be better - just different.
posted by rongorongo at 7:46 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
# Appears as THOSEAREMYBALLOONS.
posted by those are my balloons at 9:07 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by those are my balloons at 9:07 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
T THOSEAREMYBALLOONS I see what you did there
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:10 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:10 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Like, kill MS Teams and replace it with this immediately.
the monkey paw curls
posted by k3ninho at 10:45 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
the monkey paw curls
posted by k3ninho at 10:45 AM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have a sudden desire for the bastard child of ComicChat and Mastodon.
I can certainly agree with this page's thesis that ComicChat is neat because it adds a facial/body expression to what would otherwise be plain text, though honestly I think this is not anything unique to autists. It helps everyone when you can add nonverbal communication. But then again I also have fond memories of Livejournal and the way you could have multiple user icons, with one set as a default, and choose which one to use for any particular post or reply for those purposes. Why has nothing ever copied that idea, why are we all stuck with one icon for every single comment on an entire service.
posted by egypturnash at 1:27 PM on October 10, 2023
I can certainly agree with this page's thesis that ComicChat is neat because it adds a facial/body expression to what would otherwise be plain text, though honestly I think this is not anything unique to autists. It helps everyone when you can add nonverbal communication. But then again I also have fond memories of Livejournal and the way you could have multiple user icons, with one set as a default, and choose which one to use for any particular post or reply for those purposes. Why has nothing ever copied that idea, why are we all stuck with one icon for every single comment on an entire service.
posted by egypturnash at 1:27 PM on October 10, 2023
and oh god the examples at the bottom of the page sure do go into the territory of "4chan types who self-identify as autistic" that Jerk City has inextricably linked Comic Chat with.
posted by egypturnash at 1:28 PM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by egypturnash at 1:28 PM on October 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Like, kill MS Teams and replace it with this immediately.
just today my work Mac seems to have replaced Teams with something identical but now called "Teams classic" and I can't tell you what I would have given for it to have just been MS Comic Chat
this is such a perfect bit of nostalgia. it is absurdly silly, but also it's beautiful and perfect and I miss when the Internet had more space for this sort of thing
posted by Kybard at 7:29 PM on October 10, 2023
just today my work Mac seems to have replaced Teams with something identical but now called "Teams classic" and I can't tell you what I would have given for it to have just been MS Comic Chat
this is such a perfect bit of nostalgia. it is absurdly silly, but also it's beautiful and perfect and I miss when the Internet had more space for this sort of thing
posted by Kybard at 7:29 PM on October 10, 2023
I remember a dev from MS showing this off at GDC back in the 90s
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:35 AM on October 11, 2023
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:35 AM on October 11, 2023
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posted by zengargoyle at 10:24 PM on October 9, 2023 [1 favorite]