[OasisG]

Somewhat off-topic:

I had my first experience with IRC at 15. I'd recently discovered fansubbing and wanted to find subbed copies of the yet-un-aired in America episodes of Sailormoon. Some of the guys in my C++ class were avid IRC users and suggested I get on to see if they were available.

Unfortunately, one of the first things I noticed was the rampant use of the N-word. Not especially inviting to a young black girl. I asked the guys what that was about and they suggested I just ignore it. I had enough to deal with at 15. I never went back.

[TrevorBramble]

Your experience is not atypical, and it's been a struggle to win over ThinkUp contributers who've been around for awhile to the idea of spending time in IRC because of it.

But just like the larger Internet, it all depends on where you go. There's been sort of an IRC revival in development communities and I've found them largely jerk-free.

[OasisG]

I would love to give it another chance then. My biggest regret about how things went down is that I missed a lot of the cool, web-based stuff that was going on all these years (I was 15 back in 2000/2001). I was interested in the web, but I was learning more generalized C++, Java, and working with computer animation tools.

[mtogo]

That's unfortunate, but please don't paint all of IRC with the same brush.

IRC is just a protocol, and there are thousands of IRC networks, each with potentially thousands of channels. It's a really great communication mechanism, so please don't let a few racist trouble-makers keep you off of it.