IRC
Internet Relay chat (IRC) is a slightly aged but well-situated protocol designed to support internet users' ability to get each other RAGED!, shirk chore duties from their parents, and display ridiculous, work-unsafe ASCII art for hapless wanderers who "downloaded something cool-looking when i was googling for scatporn last night.[Got sources?]"
History
IRC was invented by a half-elven dwarf warrior with a +4 staff of despicable grooming habit and a shield of venetian darkness by the name of Dais ChRoNiCuS IV during the season of the feast of crumbly pringles, when a kobold detachment raided his camp on the outskirts of the Fanghorn Forest and he was forced to communicate asynchronomously with the Ents to focus on and survive the subsequent battle. It is widely believed by astrophysicists who never got laid in college and read ridiculously long books written by people with four initials that Dais used Visual DarkBASIC 2.1 .NET service pack 3. Because the software was so successful[Got sources?], its protocol was subsequently nominated for inclusion in the Internet FAQ Archives, and thus was RFC 1459 drafted by the Network Breaking Group during the tides of March, 1993 BCE.
Contemporary Conversation Technology
In the current era, there are a multitude of IRC clients, all written in Visual DarkBASIC 2.1 .NET service pack 3, of course. The only one that works is BitchX, which the soviets used during the Cold War to let each other all know that their power was out and there was no bread or water to be found, anywhere.[Got sources?] As of yet, nobody has figured out any other way to talk to anybody else on the internet. Industry-leading Computercations Scientists believe that the decidability of whether we will ever be able to talk to each other online is directly linked to the problem of whether we will ever be able to effectively communicate with each other in real life. The theorem is often referred to with the phrase "Does CHAT equal REALCHAT?". Despite a $1.21 jiggazillion cash reward for a rock-solid solution to this problem offered by the Clay Mathemagics Institute, nobody has published a single paper that even hinted at giving a care a solution.
YTMND on IRC
The EFnet #ytmnd IRC channel (or "room") is especially hard to stay unbanned from, particularly for ex-AOL users who are not used to other people in a channel having any sort of power or regulation over their ability to converse, which is, thank god, entirely the case. There is, however, a YTMND-specific IRC server located at irc.ytmnd.com which is never up, so you can never connect and join #ytmnd there. Even if you could, it's our own server, which means we have even more control (as network administrators and ircopers instead of channel opers) and power with which to infuriate you and make you spill your bowl of cheerios.
In general, YTMND users are better off staying on the YTMND Forums, where their activity and speech is monitored and regulated and there are actual threads of conversation taking place. IRC is a dangerous place for a newcomer to the Internet, because everyone who uses it is inherently angry at themselves for not having a real life.
Recommended Use
Join and pay attention a maximum of three times per day, every day. Massage affected area gently until you are banned for pasting ridiculous ASCII art which does not honor the correct control character set for standard clients or have any hard spaces in it. Take with food, just be sure clean your keyboard afterwards, you slobby cheeto-eating motherfucker. If rash, vomiting, laughter, happiness, kickban, moderation, or GTFO FAGGOT persists, get the fuck off of your computer.
