For instance:īryan Chaffin is juggling many things at once. By typing /me, whatever you typed is displayed differently.
Then there's /me, something far more whimsical than practical. Things like /join (to join a new channel), /nick (to change your handle), and /msg (to start a new private chat). Daniel Stenberg put together a great history of IRC if you're interested in the backstory, but the key thing is that it was for real-time texting, something we take for granted today.ĭesigned and maintained by command-line geeks, IRC eventually became home for a variety of text commands now known as IRC Commands. Let me explain.įirst, we have to go back to IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, one of the first real-time messaging platforms for computers. It turns whatever follows into an action rather than a normal line of text, and you can find it in games, all manner of texting apps, and even Apple's Messages app, at least on the Mac. There's one IRC command that has gained life outside of IRC, and that's the /me command.
