America Online Chat Guide

You've scraped the barrel for UseNet. You've gone for Gopher. You've tried to figure out how to log on to IRC, but nothing reaches that intellectual standard that you expect from those good old America Online chat rooms. This page will help make your experience in these rooms as enjoyable and fulfilling as possible.

Making an Entrance

When you first enter an America Online chat room, you need to say something that will get everyone's attention, and let them know just how cool you are. Here are some time tested examples:

• If you want to talk to me then talk to me.
• Hello is anybody here?
• I'm not here by choice.

Text Art Mastery

Once you've used this tecnique to get the full attention of everyone in the room, it is time to entertain them with your vast knowledge of text art. Here are the two most overused examples:

A lot of embarrassment will be saved if you learn not to confuse these.

____________________________________ You can even use horizontal lines in your speech!

Surveying the Area

It is a good idea to find out who is in the chat room and a little bit about them. You can do this just by asking! Here is an example:

Age/Sex/State/City/Zip Code/Major Credit Card #/Height/Weight/Eye Color/Favorite Smurf/Favorite Band/Year of Birth/Chinese Label for That Year/Projected Year of Death/Reason Why You Don't Think Bart Simpson Is That Funny/Favorite Educational Music Video/Personal Quote/IQ

There. Now that you know everything about everybody, you can fully enjoy your chat experience.

Instant Messages

If you determne that someone in the room is as cool as you are, you may wish to send this person an instant message. But, as we've already determined, you can't compose a complete sentence, so I'll give you a few ideas for starters:

• Uhh, hi, who are you?
• Did you know that you can do these in color? Wow!
• uhh well then i'm an AOL rep so give me your password then so i can use it ok?
• I don't get it.

Extreme Cleverness

A few AOL veterans have determined some tricks of the trade for showind everybody how neat you are.

• Copy your message so that you can paste it over and over and not have to think of anything new to say.
• Use macros that are at least 20 lines long that almost sort of look like something.
• Tell everybody to hit Alt+S+S
• Play chat room sounds that only you have.

Using these simple tricks, you can have a really great experience in the AOL chat rooms. (sort of)

people have reached a heightened enjoyment of America Online chat rooms.