GChat and You
Caroline Bankoff has written a long and charming essay for Thought Catalog about GChat, which for some of us has replaced speech as, if not the preferred than at least the most frequent form of human communication.
4. I started GChatting on March 6th, 2007, and as of this writing, I have 9940 chats in my records. If you have an idea for how I should commemorate my 10,000th chat – I estimate it will take place sometime late next week – you should let me know.
Interesting! I'm 11,069 from June of '06. You? What does it mean? Nothing? Literally nothing? Bankoff was also brave enough to search her chats to see how many of them contain the word "literally" (787), which I'm too afraid to do. Feel free to also take this opportunity to fall down the rabbit hole that is (are?) your own first GChats, as I just did, and was literally filled with shame.
9113 chats, first one on April 9, 2006.
Although I think this is not an entirely accurate number, as there have been instances that I have gone OFF THE RECORD.
maybe I'm just paranoid, but I have this fear that going OTR prompts gchat to automatically save a transcript in some secret cache somewhere.
7,712 chats as of March 2007…and the first one is "yo gmail is sweet."
The 10,000th chat will be celebrated with appletinies and soft weeping.
I have 4,128 since 1/20/09. All the ex boyfriend conversations were previously deleted to discourage obsessing during moments of weakness.
Liz's "uh oh" has just slayed me. Oh dear God, why is everything on this site so funny?!
I know!!! That was my favorite part of the entire article! I loved Edith's response, the haha and right into the question, the whole yeah-yeah-whatever thing.
Nice art direction there, Edith!
10321 since 8/3/06. I don't say "literally" that much, but "cheese" was in the hundreds. Google doesn't even want to quantify how much I talk about cheese.
you inspired me…mine is also in the vague hundreds.
"Feel free to also take this opportunity to fall down the rabbit hole that is (are?) your own first GChats"
Were, actually, and only 4,000ish since 2006. Of course, that's not counting AIM, which would probably push me to about 18 jillion chats since forever.
Also the first word I said on GChat was "zany", which I guess is a nice sign that I haven't changed in five years! Not at all.
Oh. I dunno. I take all mine off the record – not so much b/c of my incessant offerings of dikk pixx but I just hate the way I sound.
See what I mean?
Gmail IS sweet. I am a email/log purger, though, especially post-breakups. My earliest goes back to 2008, but I know I jumped on gchats and surprised chatted the technologically unwary the week it started. I'd like to think I helped to shape a lot of the block functionality.
0 since never. Old.
I have, um, 4. But also I hate talking to people. Actually, that's not true. But I do hate using chat because I always feel all this pressure to respond RIGHT NOW and it doesn't let me think about what I want to write and OMG it's stressing me out just thinking about it. (Yes I'm aware I'm weird.)
Same neurosis here.
i only have 1,700 chats since february '06. i am clearly a loser.
I don't even know how to find the comprehensive records of my chats, but I'm estimating it's around 11, since March 2010.
And this article also gave me really bad anxiety… how does everyone get their boyfriends/romantic interests on there? Do people exchange email addresses in addition to their phone numbers? Will I ever find THE ONE even if I don't gchat? rargh.
Remember ICQ?
a/s/l
I have "literally on the verge of illiteracy" in mine.
Also, my first Gchat ever (b/t me and my then-bf) goes like this:
me: hey sexy
Michael: hey asshole
7,182 since oct. '07. i was jamming skype before then and still plan to make an illustrated book of psychotic quotes from my boss. "fuck you, from iceland" was one of my favorites.
First shameful gchat exhange ev, 2006: "E: ah ha gmail chat/me: hahah this is ridick/E: yeah it is/my new favorite person in the whole world is this girl meg/also I made out with a photographer from SNL last night, the one who takes the neon pics."
I do not remember meg or this photographer.
one of my favorite games to play is to search 2 or 3 random words, and see what Gchat conversations come up. I just searched "sex" and "newspaper" which pulled up a discussion that started with who was getting laid more, and ended with National High-Five day. I highly recommend you try this with your own random words, especially if one of those words is "sex"
I find it SHOCKING that I only have 6574 sincee 2/17/06. My first line: "so i am wondering how this works and you are the only available one." GUHHH No I actually can't do this, it's going to make me really nostalgic and sad… memories….
My first Gchat with edith zimmerman, 9/22/06
Edith: what up slut butt
me: busy at work! cant chatr!
Edith: but can you chat?
i'm busy at work too and that never stops me. i keep my fingers crossed that i'll be fired
anyway
ta ta
me: bye
YOU CAN'T JUST DO THAT
My first gchat log:
Caroline: hi
are you aroung?
Apparently I wasn't.
I've never saved my gchats, but you know what, because of this post I think I will from now on.
First chat:
Z: x20 = 749.49
for #8
Gchat made cheating off girls in math class so much easier
All of my g-chats have started off well-intentioned, but quickly degrade into ALL-CAPS and emoticons.