{"slug": "show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s", "title": "Show HN: An interactive story about living on IRC in the '90s", "summary": "A software engineer who grew up with IRC in the 1990s has created an interactive browser-based story about that era, developed with AI, available at Royal Road. The experience lets readers play through the author's journey on IRC networks like DALNet, EFNet, and Undernet, aiming to share the transformative joy of early online life.", "body_md": "Hi, HN. Long time lurker, first time poster.\n\nI'm a long time software engineer, and I started getting really into computers and the internet as a kid in the late 80s and early 90s. I started using IRC and Linux and just fell in love with everything about it.\n\nBefore 2000 I stopped 'hacking' for several years because I thought I needed to get a real-world life and that only nerds were online. But ironically in the time that I was out of the game, online social networks became \"cool\" somehow, and every person on the planet developed an online persona.\n\nAnyhoo, I created a story about my experiences online ([https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/146026/eye-are-see](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/146026/eye-are-see)). As I was writing it I kept feeling like man, it would be really awesome to experience this again, so I developed (yes, with AI) a browser-based interactive experience that allows readers to play through the journey.\n\nIf you were ever on IRC (e.g., DALNet, EFNet, Undernet, etc) or if you're just curious about out what it was like, check it out. That part of my life was so transformative and so special, and hopefully I can share a little bit of that joy with other folks.\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155710)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 0", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s", "canonical_source": "https://eyearesee.winkingfig.com", "published_at": "2026-08-03 13:42:23+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-03 13:52:29.404720+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai"], "entities": ["Royal Road", "DALNet", "EFNet", "Undernet"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-an-interactive-story-about-living-on-irc-in-the-90s.jsonld"}}