(NOT A STORY)Chars31 Info
I'm from Southern Ontario, Canada.
As of creating this info, I'm 30 years old and it's January of 2020.
I still live and work in Southern Ontario.
I work in a call center, at a computer all day, with usually long stints of waiting for calls to come in(Hence searching things of a nostalgic nature online for fun!)
I can't pinpoint exactly when I first started using Chars31, but the earliest I can recall using it, I was 11 years old. I know this because it was about 2 years after I had "migrated" from a DBZ forum/RP chat I first used in early 1999(I would have been 9!) DBZ was broadcast on YTV(A Canadian kids tv channel) heavily from 97'-03'. Back then in the early stages of the interwebs, there were multiple fan sites created for DBZ, usually with hit counters and animated GIF's and a sparkly background. And I noticed two things in common on all of them; They all had a guestbook/forum/chatroom.
When DBZ was still being translated on a weekly basis, you didn't know what was going to happen to the characters until weeks(sometimes months) later, and unless you could read Japanese, or went to a comic book store to see if they had the manga from that chapter in the storyline. So in my young mind, I thought this was an easier method, and I could discuss this with likeminded people who had better resources than I did. When I entered the chat however, it was not what I expected at all. It wasn't people discussing the show, it was people RE-ENACTING IT!
They would have screen names of their favourite characters and would be associating with one another using those personas. Actions took place in the form of asterisks (*I lock my palms behind my back as I ready a massive Ki blast*) like that. There would be 15-20 people on the username list and two of them would be "Fighting" as others would be commentating or simply observing. Having never been in a chat before, or even had an email, I noticed these people were doing something with the technology of their time, which is something that people aren't constricted to do as much now a days; They were using their imagination.
This was mind blowing for me. It was like a video game, but there were little to no rules, everything was fair use, and you could be anyone or do anything, all via text in what was basically just a 250 line limit, live forum. The first thing I noticed about these individuals, is that it was not chaos, it was a community. There was etiquette, there was unspoken rules everyone seemed to naturally follow and there was something of an order or hierarchy in this small corner of this random website. I noticed that those who typed more quickly, were more respected, and "assigned" as the room leaders. The others who were more apt to read what they typed, or didn't type as much were followers, going along with the story that was set for them.
This gave me an immense incentive to join in. I was a very fast typist, even young. My father had an old mechanical typewriter that I would practice on, and they had just installed a computer lab in my school, which typing had become party of the curriculum, so I had gotten very proficient in the art of QWERTY. And this gave me a huge advantage in this area. Especially in one huge aspect, that went on daily, which was fighting.
There were at least 20-30 fights in these rooms, every 24 hours, maybe more, ranging from 10 minutes to hours, sometimes. There was even a style for it, which they used called "T2". It was for the most part, organized, and played out, much like a game, and if you could type fast, you dominated that game. Granted, I didn't do too much fighting, as these were teens, or even adults, doing their own thing, and even though I typed at about 45WPM(about half my current speed which is 95WPM today), I didn't exactly know WHAT to type. So like others, I watched, and occasionally commented on them. Through this I picked up the social cue's, how fights would start, how they would finish, who would end up fighting who, sometimes, there was clans formed and multiple people fought in sequence or even turn based, a-la Final Fantasy.
It was incredible.
As of creating this info, I'm 30 years old and it's January of 2020.
I still live and work in Southern Ontario.
I work in a call center, at a computer all day, with usually long stints of waiting for calls to come in(Hence searching things of a nostalgic nature online for fun!)
I can't pinpoint exactly when I first started using Chars31, but the earliest I can recall using it, I was 11 years old. I know this because it was about 2 years after I had "migrated" from a DBZ forum/RP chat I first used in early 1999(I would have been 9!) DBZ was broadcast on YTV(A Canadian kids tv channel) heavily from 97'-03'. Back then in the early stages of the interwebs, there were multiple fan sites created for DBZ, usually with hit counters and animated GIF's and a sparkly background. And I noticed two things in common on all of them; They all had a guestbook/forum/chatroom.
When DBZ was still being translated on a weekly basis, you didn't know what was going to happen to the characters until weeks(sometimes months) later, and unless you could read Japanese, or went to a comic book store to see if they had the manga from that chapter in the storyline. So in my young mind, I thought this was an easier method, and I could discuss this with likeminded people who had better resources than I did. When I entered the chat however, it was not what I expected at all. It wasn't people discussing the show, it was people RE-ENACTING IT!
They would have screen names of their favourite characters and would be associating with one another using those personas. Actions took place in the form of asterisks (*I lock my palms behind my back as I ready a massive Ki blast*) like that. There would be 15-20 people on the username list and two of them would be "Fighting" as others would be commentating or simply observing. Having never been in a chat before, or even had an email, I noticed these people were doing something with the technology of their time, which is something that people aren't constricted to do as much now a days; They were using their imagination.
This was mind blowing for me. It was like a video game, but there were little to no rules, everything was fair use, and you could be anyone or do anything, all via text in what was basically just a 250 line limit, live forum. The first thing I noticed about these individuals, is that it was not chaos, it was a community. There was etiquette, there was unspoken rules everyone seemed to naturally follow and there was something of an order or hierarchy in this small corner of this random website. I noticed that those who typed more quickly, were more respected, and "assigned" as the room leaders. The others who were more apt to read what they typed, or didn't type as much were followers, going along with the story that was set for them.
This gave me an immense incentive to join in. I was a very fast typist, even young. My father had an old mechanical typewriter that I would practice on, and they had just installed a computer lab in my school, which typing had become party of the curriculum, so I had gotten very proficient in the art of QWERTY. And this gave me a huge advantage in this area. Especially in one huge aspect, that went on daily, which was fighting.
There were at least 20-30 fights in these rooms, every 24 hours, maybe more, ranging from 10 minutes to hours, sometimes. There was even a style for it, which they used called "T2". It was for the most part, organized, and played out, much like a game, and if you could type fast, you dominated that game. Granted, I didn't do too much fighting, as these were teens, or even adults, doing their own thing, and even though I typed at about 45WPM(about half my current speed which is 95WPM today), I didn't exactly know WHAT to type. So like others, I watched, and occasionally commented on them. Through this I picked up the social cue's, how fights would start, how they would finish, who would end up fighting who, sometimes, there was clans formed and multiple people fought in sequence or even turn based, a-la Final Fantasy.
It was incredible.