The FilipinoBar or commonly known now as FB first started sometime in June, 2002. It was unfortunate that no one really took notice of the exact date the chat room opened since maybe most of us thought it was just an insignificant room and just a chat past time. 

As anyone in the chat room it was a convenient means to while away your time for all sorts of reasons like using the chat as a mild sleeping pill, trying to unwind the stress from a busy day, being funny sometimes, chase girls (or boys) as the case maybe and meet new friends and probably start an online relationship.

However we found out later that there are more things you can do in a chatroom than just whiling your time and fooling around. You can discuss issues, debate about sex, politics, religion, love and so forth. And on a more personal basis, you can help chat friends who have confided their problems simply by being there and listening and sometimes giving your own views and advices based on your real life experience.

I guess this made the bonding and friendship at FB became deep and intense that most of us find ourselves in front of our computers chatting during our free times.

As it is in the real world, we find that the feelings in the cyber world is >real, and can be intense sometimes. That a simple discussion can lead to personal insults and finally breakdown of friendships if we are not careful. This became both the motivation and the problem for us. How to strike a good balance that we can have passionate discussion on critical issues but will end well. Then all of us realized that since chat room is a venue of friendship then the common value of respect and trust became a byword. This means that whatever we say or do, even if there is a great difference of opinion all of us realizes that the underlying bonding and friendship is strong and will always keep us together.

Then we noted too that in any gathering there will be always strong personalities to dominate and passive ones who will just be there as spectators but conflict sometimes arise when one or few imposes their will on many. We know this is the norm, but in chat rooms we want to try something new. Something based on trust and respect as main element that we hope lead to self-regulation. Once in a while we there will be a stray character. It has its purpose too, makes a boring day exciting and a wake up call to the guardians of the room.

It is funny that even in the chat world, we have crazy guys who spend most of their time trying to ban people and restrict them from entering a chatroom. Worst is to take over the room and kick the peaceful chatters out to show his/her power in cyber world. But at FB we realized that the room is not really the "room" per se. But it is the common desire of the chatters to meet. So even if a room is hacked, it is so easy to make another room in less than a minute and pass the link to others and the chat fun resumes.

But as there are crazy wizards on the net, there are white knights too, people who act as Robin Hood and save those rooms and chatters like us from completely being banned. Sounds interesting? The forces of good and evil permeates into the cyber world. This is true. It is a fact. And we sometimes will never know who they are.

In the end we realize, the similarity between the cyber world and real world. And the similarity is US, the people, the user, the chatter. That at the end of those chatline is a real person in a real world with real feelings that he just took the cyber path to meet and explore the other 
world.