But The Stack Overflow Drama Is Wild - Tumblr Posts

Most people wouldn't say that Stack Overflow is in any way obscure, but then again most people don't really go below the surface of simply asking and maybe answering. Most people have no idea that, for example, Stack Overflow has it's own chat server which, although it hasn't been updated in years, is quite possibly the best system of it's type that I've ever used. In fact, there are actually two different servers, one for Stack Overflow and one for the rest of the Stack Exchange Network.

But that's how I got my start to being online. Way back when I didn't even have any social media, I made a Stack Overflow account to ask a terrible (now deleted (not by me (pretty sure it got roomba'd))) question about some especially tricky programming question that I couldn't solve after days of searching. As I used the site more, I began learning more about how it functions and the systems that underpin it, and eventually found my way to meta and then to chat, where I found a very friendly room of people who were the first real software engineers I got to know.

The only problem is that the userbase on stack overflow skews pretty old, especially compared to me at the time, and I think I picked up a lot of my internet-speak from them. Even now, when talking to closer to me in age, I frequently get called out for sounding old or being a boomer, which I think is on account of the dialect of internet I first picked up.

Also, feel like I gotta throw this in, but I know stack overflow gets a lot of shit thrown at it for being hard to approach and for being rude/unwelcoming/mean/heavy handed etc etc I'm sure you've heard the refrain. But as someone who's gotten to know how all these systems work, I promise it isn't all that scary once you understand how to approach it. Anyways, I'm getting off topic, but maybe I'll post about how to be a new user on stack overflow one of these days :P

What was your obscure chatroom/forum that you used before social media? Don’t say Gaia Online or Club Penguin. I’m talking obscure.