The Chatter's Dictionary

U

Unfriendly

The reputation you risk getting whenever you come up as busy on your ICQ, or refuse chatting request, or basically be a perfect snob to all and sundry. Hey, what do you EXPECT them to think??

User Is Online

A part of ICQ that enables the user to get an alert about whoever they want that tells them when that person is online. What's wrong with just keeping an eye on when their name comes up, I don't know, but the Net has to keep bombarding us with all these abilities or we would get pretty bored with nothing to confuse us.

V

Validation

When joining a chatting room, some of them ask you to validate, meaning you have to give them some information, they give you a secret number that you have to enter the first time you chat, and you are then an official member! But no, there are no monthly prizes, no members of the week, nothing like that. Well, not in the rooms I've been too! How about it everyone, huh??

W

Water/Food Fights

Yep, you can even have these while in chatting rooms. And what's more, you don't have to clean up afterwards! Sheer childishness, of course, only for those with nothing better to do, and of course I've never been involved in one! What do you take me for??? I was just about to drink this glass of water, that's all...

Weather

One of the most popular questions anyone asks when chatting is "How's the weather?" Not very exciting, nor does it leave a lot of scope for stimulating discussion, unless you're a meteorologist or just have this fasination about that snow that you never seem to get where you are.

Weirdoes

They're everywhere in the world, and you can't escape them, even on the Net. The worst part is when you come into a room feeling down, hoping for some uplifting conversation, and someone called Apricot Man starts sending you Private Messages about his collection of one-eyed stuffed crocodiles and asks you if you want to meet him at Miami Beach so you can admire the texture of the sand together. Then again, maybe that kind of person excites you. Well, guess who's a weirdo too then??

Wet Blanket

When you're having lots of fun in your chatting room, telling jokes, etc, and someone suddenly enters, frowns on all this immaturity and tries to start a serious conversation, they are regularly thought of as wet blankets. Either that or they just can't think of a good joke themselves.

Where are you from?

Another one of those popular questions. Well, it really is number one. The chanes are the answer will be somewhere in the U.S. and for all we non-Americans, the chances are they'll put the place up in initials that we don't recognize so we are none the wiser. If you live in Australia though, count the amount of times Americans say, "Cool! I've always wanted to go there". And you thought they didn't know about the Land Down Under...

What's up Doc?

What a certain chatter gets asked more often than he cares to remember, and has long since given up thinking of different and witty ways to reply.

Why is that your handle?

Ooh, this can be a cruncher! You come into a Christian room with some strange name that sounds very holy and religously significant, you are asked what it means and you're rather embarrassed to say because you actually took it from that obscure villain in an old "Star Trek" episode you watched last week.

X,Y,Z

Okay, okay, I couldn't think of anything for these last three letters. Just wanted to make sure everyone understood that I do know my whole alphabet.