Today, I brought myself to a decision which was overdue.
I spent the last five years or so hanging around in a neat gamedev IRC channel, and the last four or so with founder access level (which is the highest privilege one can have in such a chatroom). The channel was a place of relaxation, chitchat, and sometimes even interesting ontopic gamedev discussion, and these guys really meant alot to me – all of them. I liked even those ones who sometimes were a real pain in the neck, and sometimes I really had to laugh in front of my tube when I had to admonish them at the same time.
I always joined this chat if my PC was running, regardless whether I was coding, playing, writing, learning, or, of course, chatting. I spent some 10000 hours online with my latest mIRC installation, always with these guys, in this one chatroom. Actually, these guys even “survived” several ex-girlfriends! Although there were some differences from time to time, all the 40 or so regulars stayed, all the years. We met several times in real life, had great fun together, and I considered many of them friends.
But, well, people change. Either in a positive, or in a negative manner, or simply just in a way they can’t deal with each other anymore. Interests change, too. And, unfortunately, spare time changes. It literally shrinks the older one gets. Since I started my professional work in 2003, I joined the chat less frequently, and I recognized that I lost participation and sympathy more and more. I suddenly saw people fight I had never expected to, in a way that I had never expected, and I watched peoples personalities change – from the distance that raised, these changes were more obvious and hence even more frightening.
Today, it finally became clear to me that I was no longer part of that process, but just a frequent visitor, a distant observer.
Thus I asked to vote for a new channel founder today. I will drop my founder status and watch the distance grow. I can’t do anything about it anyway – it’s just the way the things go.