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17 May 2007
What does MetaChat mean to you? Since it's our second birthday and all, let's do some navel-gazing.→[More:]Also, mucho thanks from all of us to taz, dodgygeezer and seanyboy for constantly working in the shadows and keeping the old girl running in tip-top shape.
I will start by saying that the past few years of my life have been really rough. I've lost a lot of friends, for reasons that just don't make a lot of sense.
But through the past 2 years of Metachat, I've made many more friends than I lost. I have ended up with a hand-full of really close friends because of this place. I plant a big kiss on each of your faces.
I have made life-long friends here. (I don't care if that seems like silly internet fluff. I know it's true. I also don't care what it came from.)
thanks from all of us to taz, dodgygeezer and seanyboy...
I have to turn that around and thank all the bunnies, who are the site, and our lighthearted, lighthanded, lightheaded, and lovely mods. I haven't touched the site in a month and a half, at least, since the real world has been a bit too demanding recently... but this is about to change! and I'll be able to play a little catchup on design things and projects I've totally neglected. Really.
*looks at seanyboy, kisses taz and mudpuppie instead*
MetaChat is where my friends hang out. I really don't have friends in meatspace that I spend any time with so, for better or worse, you guys are my best friends. When I am feeling down, you let me whine and don't judge me. When I'm feeling good, you make me feel better. I have never met (and will probably never meet) any of you, yet I feel closer to you than to anyone else.
I have been looking for this for ages and finally the new widget for user activity helped me. This is what I wrote about MeFi in 2003 and a lot of that applies here, too (with less fights, though).
This is apropos, also - I wonder where, in five years or so, we will all be and whether we will even remember MeCha.
Feeling somewhat maudlin, I am. It's 6pm, dark outside and I am still at work. My choice would be to stay here all night and hang out with you all, but I must away soon, before security comes and kicks me out for being in the building outside the hours my security card entitles me to.
And the mods. You have a lightness of touch that would make any girl swoon, and I'm thankful about that too.
Wait, seanyboy is a girl?
This is one of the few places where people 'get' me. I don't feel like the weird geek unfashionista odd-taste-in-music shy person I probably come across as to the outside world. I've made some good friends here, people I really care about, whether I've met them in person or not.
As most of you know, the past 18 months were rough, rough, rough for me, but you guys really helped, you truly did.
Meetups have helped me learn to socialise in the 'real world'. I spend too much time with AA people, and before I got sober, I only used to hang out with people who drank like me, so I need to learn how to enjoy myself with people who aren't either sober or drunk alcoholics. The meetups have been awesome, I've enjoyed every one I've been on, and I now have a huge crush on someone I met at a meetup.
People's lives are amazing, even when they might seem humdrum or boring to them. I love hearing about the things people do - work, home, family, friends, pets.
Next you're going to tell me that fluffybattlekitten isn't a kitten, Orange Swan isn't a swan, bunnyfire isn't a bunny, rainbaby isn't a baby, BoringPostcards isn't boring and Hugh Janus isn't ...
(Echoing the sentiments of others, this is a good place for a weirdo like me to feel normal and accepted and that's a great thing. good work taz, seany, et al)
Though I've been less active over the past months, I still visit every single day and look in on you guys. I've lurked on many (many) internet communities, and Metachat was the first (and still the only) one where I've been compelled to contribute. I feel relaxed and comfortable here, and, as others have said, have made several very important real-life friends in the process.
Wow, I can't believe it's ONLY two years old. When I came aboard everything was clicking along so smoothly, I assumed MeCha had been here forever!
MetaChat is, to me, the only place on the internet that actually feels "social." It didn't take me long to find that I really cared about the people here, and I've made more real-life friends here in less than two years than I've done in my whole life on the rest of the web. I spend part of every day here and learn stuff, laugh, get glimpses into the lives of others, and overall feel like I'm spending time with YOU incredible people every day.
It's like the bumblebee that shouldn't be able to fly- a place like this shouldn't be able to stay as cool as it is, but our mods and admins and all of you other bunnies somehow keep it flying, so thank you, thank you for that. :)
I also owe jonmc a beer for telling me about MetaChat in the first place and inviting me here- I'll make good on that one day, jon, I promise!
That was my first mecha comment ever. Huh. Doesn't seem like two years. I'm all stressed and depressed right not so I'm not going to get gooey over Mecha too - I'm just going to say that I'm very, very, very thankful it exists. I've made good friends here. And even landed a part time contract job once. I doubt more than two days have gone by without me at least checking on Mecha once for these two years. Thank you taz & dodgy & seany! I am so friggin' glad you exist and you made this place that I cannot say and thank you to all the bunnies for just being around and being funny and being awesome. Because metachat as a whole is exactly that - awesome. Dude. Totally awesome.
A place for me to laugh, to wonder at the sublime intelligence I find here, a place to learn and take me away from work and the hassles of every day life. A place where I have made some wonderful friends I may never meet. A place I can feel like I can say anything without a flame war ensuing.
So many of you have made a real difference in my life, for the better, and I thank you for it sincerely. It's my favorite place on the Web, hands down. It's what MetaFilter could have been, but thankfully wasn't because then we wouldn't have this wonderful light blue room to gather in, commiserate, and play.
I also would like to thank taz, seanyboy, dodgy and the mods - you all keep it awesome here.
For my part, I too have made plenty of real-life friends here, and moreover, they're people who I probably would never have made the effort to get to know in real life. People who I would have thought "they're not interested in getting to know me", or people who were just too different (hence scary) from me that I wouldn't have even thought to make an overture towards. did that make sense? not sure.
I love the tone of this place. I feel like even when we fight with each other, it's (mostly) a sense of trying to understand the other people, and maybe being frustrated that we can't, rather than malice or points scoring.
I've spent many nights (and days) ignoring the BF to hang out here. The bunnies on IRC have kept me company through months of late nights, waiting for the BF to come home from work. I'm slightly worried that the people at my first Chicago meetup (when pups was here) think I drink too much. But whatever... You're all wonderful. So wonderful, that I'm convinced that I'm going to travel a bunch and come visit all of you sometime.
Happy birthday!
I don't like pancakes, or waffles. I prefer French toast
Okay, so I came along a little bit late, and folks have already said everything that I was going to say, and more eloquently than I could ever hope to say it.
The way I feel about MetaChat is the way I've felt about other really exceptional groups of people in special places over my lifetime. I am reasonably extraverted and have little problem being social, but I've always found it difficult to locate the groups of people I wanted to be social with. I've been lucky to find lots of them -- the friends I bonded with and lived with at summer camp and in an outdoor education school where I worked and friends on boats I sailed with. People I met while traveling or volunteering. People who were outside the mainstream, but all quite different from one another, who were real individuals. People who were interesting and wildly funny. People who were incisively intelligent and thoughtful. And what's more moving, people who were willing to be open and sometimes a bit vulnerable. Places like that are so rare, and they are the places I feel most like myself.
So it's an oasis. I love the fact that MetaChat rewards intention: if your intent is to be a participant, to contribute to the fun, to uphold, to be honest, to support, to share, to be open, to think, to consider, then the community rewards you. The beauty of MetaChat depends upon its being a safe place. People can let down their guards here, lay aside any need to impress or fit in, and just be, because the underlying assumption is that we are all well-meaning. That beauty is also its fragility, because the safety of the place could easily vanish - it's completely dependent on the tacit agreement of the site members that we come here to enjoy ourselves and enrich the community. Which makes it all the more amazing that day in, day out, it stays a very good place, thanks to the generous participation of all who support it.
I do love my MeFi, but MeFi and MeCha are as different as a large college seminar and the small table of friends I look for in the dining hall, to sit down with and help process it all. MetaFilter is a great place to discuss issues and ideas, while MetaChat takes on bigger and more personal things: identity, concerns, ups and downs, the daily struggles and joys of life, and the silly odd quirkiness with which we can approach it all.
You're all real people to me. Many have become real-life friends; some I've met, some I've not. But your art is on my walls and gracing my house, your music is on my playlists, your book recommendations are on my side tables, your advice is in my head, and your empathy and support are with me always. Thanks to all of you who make MetaChat and for its temple guards, taz, seany, and dodgygeezer.
I have been in serial ad hoc online communities since mid-1994. What I have learned is that you guys are a tad more erudite than the crew at Bianca's Smut Shack.
I enjoy it here. I don't know if I will ever meet any of you in person, but I like all of you a lot.
Is this really my first comment? I went through some mild-to-medium bouts of insomnia in college, and the metachat IRC was much better than staring at the ceiling! Looking back through those first threads, I'm amazed at some of the names we rarely see around here anymore. ethylene pops in and out, but what happened to amberglow, for example?
Metachat is really a friendly place, but it's important to remember that civility requires constant vigilance. The moderators here are doing a great job of leading by example, and moderating with a waggling finger rather than a big banhammer.
The diversity of the people here really impresses me. It's such a spectrum of opinions and backgrounds, with hadjiboy on one side and paulsc on the other! I'm glad that we can have mostly civil discussions with few hurt feelings and almost no flame outs. It's really striking, when compared to other online communities.
On Mefi, I feel like I have to protect myself. It's easier, there, to post on-off snarky comments than it is to engage in discussion. It's the opposite here, although snark does have it's place.
I'm a big fan of this place. Happy birthday us! Ultimately, it's nice having an outlet to go shoot the shit with intelligent, interesting people without fear of flamewar.
Also, weird that today happened to be the MeCha birthday; it's also my wedding anniversary. I'm all celebratory today.
Should we put up a MeTa thread? In light of muddgirls' comment I'm thinking about inviting some of the oldtimers to drop by and say hey. . . what do y'all think? Hee hee, I'm soft posting a MeTa post! How, um, meta!
Ahoy! Metachat is my place to come and kill some time, learn some things and laugh at all the funny things that exist on the interwebs. The bunnies are the nicest bunch of people that I've met on the 'net. I even had a relationship with one, got a year's worth of fun and then moved on. You guys have helped me through a lot, the slaying of my relative and the breakup with the squirrelly bunny (I'm sure you guys miss his presence here but I sure don't :P ). The bunnies are the therapist that is intermittently needed. You guys are just as important to me as my real-life friends. Thanks for everything bunnies! :D
I like it. It makes me laugh and it makes me cry and it makes me babble, "Why oh why?" It's sometimes sweet like shoefly pie. And, like the aforementioned pie, you can get a little fly foot caught in it, and try as you might, you buzz and flap and you can't break free without pulling one of your legs off, which is subsequently eaten unknowingly by one of those giant bipedal mammals who feed us. But that's okay, because you have five more legs that will grow stronger and make up the difference during the 27 hours you have left to live.
The mods are cool, as are the users, and this place tolerates me, and that's enough for me. Even after things go ass-up it's worth coming back to, which makes for a nice place. I hate being called a bunny, though. I'm a bonobo-fucking, man-eating tiger with a sixteen-inch boot knife, stabbing the eyes out of all the other tigers in the jungle.
Damn, coffee makes me into a big asshole. I think Metafilter is great, I really do. And the people who make it great are also great. Thanks, and happy birthday.
Even though I've been less active in recent months, I still check the site every day. It's a place where I've gotten props, given props, made fun acquaintances and longtime friends (one of whom inspired me to get back into photography), traveled to visit strangers I felt perfectly comfortable with, had whuffles and snuggles and occasionally kisses or even something more, and traded some cool music. It's probably changed my life in some subtle ways. Thanks, bunnies!
You are a wonderful crowd, you are my break from reality, you have lives I envy in places I dream about. I don't comment often to say it, but I love hearing about everything going on in your little worlds. My meatspace friends are all too far elsewhere for just running off to have a drink and chat about crazy random awesome things, so being here is sometimes as much human communication as I get in a day. Thank you.
Happy two! I like that I can be silly, stupid (I really didn't know that airbags inflate because of a tiny explosion), crabby or excited all in the same sentence and still fit in. Three are some amazingly smart and talented people here, and whoever says that the interwebs are full of chainsaw wielding axe muderers hasn't been to the 7-11 lately.
Uh that would be There. There are more than three amazing people here. Although three amazing people do keep it humming. If I ever get to meet taz in person, she gets a spine straightening hug.
I count the last couple of years among the worst in my life but this place has been fun and supportive. I am amazed at the level of talent, skill, and experience to be found in our little group. You are a damn fine lot.
Being a mod here mostly involves adding moreinside tags, deleting doubled comments and the occasional public or private note saying "play nice". You all take pride in the place and don't leave your garbage all over or tag the walls.
Okay, so I'm a relative newbie, but I still want to add to the "I like you" babble.
Actually, I first came to MetaChat a long time ago, maybe near the beginning, I don't remember. And I loaded the site, and I thought, "WTF? Bunnies? Pancakes? Cilantro? These people are way too big on the inside jokes. They'll never let me in or like me or be nice to me. I'm going away now."
Then, for some odd reason, I came back a few months ago, and next thing I knew I was thinking, "Cilantro! Bunnies! Pancakes! I love you all!"
I thought you were an exclusive club, but you're not. You're awesome and helpful and welcoming and -- most importantly -- hilarious.
Maybe one day I'll even let myself meet some of you in real life. There's no longer any excuse to avoid it, you know?
I'm pretty new here, but I can honestly say this is one of the few online communities I feel significantly drawn to. I'm rather old-fashioned about my socializing -- despite being quite shy, I generally prefer to meet face-to-face. I had never even tried irc (and I'm a geek, I was surfin' with lynx on a unix terminal back in the day), until trying the metachat irc last weekend. So that really says a lot -- there's just something special about ya'll that keep me coming back (that is, nearly every day, and more times throughout the day than I want to admit).
I really can't imagine life without MetaChat. There are so many things I could say, but what it comes down to is that I love this site, and have made some amazing friends because of it.
Yup, this place rocks, along with its many members. (That sounds vaguely dirty doesn't it?) Like others, I can easy say that this is the only online community that I have ever participated in. Yeah, sure, I've commented in the blue, asked and answered a few in the green, and so on, but this is only place that I feel like I am part of.
It's probably my favorite site in terms of experience. I probably visit the blue more often, but usually because there's more posts there. Everyone here is so friendly and encouraging!
Staying home to raise my kids was a hard decision for me. I missed my colleagues and friends. I missed hanging out with smart, funny, creative people. I missed stupid nonsense conversations in the break room and people stopping by my desk to tell me about a great new album. I missed conversations that started with, "So, I was reading the other day about..." I missed the injokes and the gossip and the general sense of community.
Then I found you guys and I got all that back. How cool.
Yay, it's morning and I get to come back to MeCha! I sat on the train this morning thinking about coming back here and almost ran to work so I could get in here faster.
I think we can all agree that, as usual, Miko cut straight to the heart of the matter and, in that eloquent way that only Miko can achieve, said what we were all thinking.
A nice place to be, indeed. A safe place too, which is just as important. A place where it is safe to be nice and safe to be yourself without fear of ridicule, neither of which are true in the "real" world.
This is my favorite site. The first place I come to after checking my e-mail. I love the posts, the pictures, the family that we've become. I've been realizing lately how often I mention "My Internet Friends" and whatever you all have brought to my attention recently. Through you, I've learned about so many things, favorited so many sites (cartoons, especially), discovered new authors (and old ones - thanks, shane!). Sometimes, I feel that I can be more myself here than in my "real" life. I love you all. I've laughed with you, cried for you, been outraged with you. I look forward to lots of chats with you in years to come.
I like this place very much. For the diversity of the voices and the kindness and the intelligence and the friendlieness. Because I met you all right when I started thinking that the world is getting narrow and dry and repetitive. I am really glad to know you, and I am sorry I cannot be spend more time here.
*group grope hug*
deborah!!!!!
this is the second time I've ever heard this expression and the first was also tonight! Do you know my collegue? Somebody named Bill? eeeeriieeee! oooooohhh!
It was an accident, okay? I never imagined myself a part of anything. And yet here I am, begging your forgiveness for not speaking here or over there. The last few years, I don't know, I lost my grip on what it takes to be consistent, both on websites and in my work. Sometimes I lose faith in basic communication, nevermind the witticisms, goodwill and wuggles that power this place. A terrible confusion ruins the heart; I know not what stops me. But at least, for a moment, I'm getting some peace here now.
Even during my internet hiatus...i made sure to at least read what was going on here, catching up on the state of MeCha...i abandoned Mefi completely...
i think the world of you...the kindness i see in you gives me hope.
I was just thinking of making a thread saying how much I appreciated this site. I haven’t been here long enough to get to know everyone, but sometimes you just get a feel for a place and you know that this is the place you want to be in. That it’s a place where you’ll be liked, and respected, and treated fairly, and if you’re lucky, might even make some really good friends at.
I can't say anything that hasn't been said, so I will simply say that you are all my friends. No "online" prefix/disclaimer or anything of the sort. I'll buy you beers, you can sleep on my couch, I'll help you move, I'll tell you when you have greens in your teeth before you go put the moves on that cute bunny across the room.
MetaChat, you are truely special, and I'm glad that each and every one of us is here at the party.
The past year and a half have been pretty tumultuous for me, and it's been amazing to jump into IRC and have someone to joke and chat with.
When I've had difficult times or decisions, I like the idea that I can come hear and bounce my ideas/issues off of the bunnies without worrying about what people think. Alternately, I like the idea that there have been times when I've been there to share some friendly advice or cheer someone up.
I've met people I care about a lot - so many good friends - through the site proper, IRC and meetups. I tend to come and go when life starts kicking my ass too much, but I always check in to make sure things are going ok over here.
To all the members, but especially the mods, thanks so much for everything. I love you guys. :)
I realized awhile back that before there was MeCha I used to visit MonkeyFilter and #tapes and never feel quite satisfied with them. Now I just use MeCha. It really feels like an extension of MeFi. It's a place where I can spout my stories and bring minor problems to be solved and hear all kinds of interesting trivia about other people's lives.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
